Utterly Mad
The Pit => Creative Endeavors => Topic started by: saltmummy626 on September 20, 2017, 05:03:22 pm
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1. North of Nowhere
In the sonoran desert, three thousand miles from New England and the ravages of Gods Army and the bandits that troubled that region, a star moves and settles gently in a lonely tract of hardpan just north of what was once the Texas Mexico border. The bright point of light stops a few feet from the ground before widening into a field of stars, disgorging its passengers before fading into nothing. One dead, one merely unconscious. There is no one to witness this strange event, none to greet the cosmic passengers of that traveling star. The sun begins to set, the screamers begin to emerge from their hiding places among the dunes, and the stars above in the crystal clear sky play out their stellar show for none to see. The sun rises in the morning, banishing the screeching pygmies that have come to call the desert home and turning the sky into a bottomless vault of blue. A wheel of perfect azure rolling away in the distance, marred only by the blazing sun trundling across its unmarked surface and there is no one to mark its passage. The winds blow to cover the bowl and it’s star borne travelers in drifts of shifting sand. Night falls, and the screamers come out. This time, they find the body of the deceased and they rip it to shreds without finding the other buried beneath her protective dune only a few feet away. Day break again, and this time, something is changing.
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She’s hot. So hot, so dry. She needs water, so much water, a bucket, a barrel, no... even the river that runs adjacent to the farm cannot provide enough water. Part of it is her desire for alcohol, flaring up after a week or two of sobriety, but that’s not all it is. Catnip pushes and pummels herself into wakefulness, and finds herself buried in something gritty but fine. Sand. So much sand. “I’m dead?” she thinks, “No, if I was dead, would I be this thirsty?” Her hands break free of the sand confining her, the air above is not cool. It is hot and dry, and she can feel the already hot morning sun burning into the bare flesh of her palms. “Kathrine?” She tries to say, getting a mouth full of sand for her trouble. It springs her awake fully, and she explodes from the dune with the force of her coughing and choking. It strikes her before the fit subsides that she is surrounded on all sides by sand, she’s never seen so much sand and hardpan and dirt, but no grass or leaves. No water. Never been so hot. “Where…” Catnip reaches for her hat, maybe even her sunglasses, but finds neither. She looks at herself and finds that is nude. Her clothes and tools are nowhere to be found. Not in the bowl, not buried beneath the brownish sand. “What the… Why am I…?” Catnip has never felt so dry, so thirsty, so exposed. She crests the rim of the bowl of sand, and the sight before her shocks her. “Where am I?” Comes her awestruck whisper. Stretching out around her in every direction, is a trackless waste she has never imagined existed. “What is this?” she asks, but there are none to answer her question.
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“Kathrine…” She says, her voice cracking on the second syllable. Had she thought the sun was bright at home? No, she’d been foolish then. She knew better now. The desert sun shone down on her with malevolent intent. It wanted to kill her, to dry her out, to turn her to no more than dust and a pile of bleached bones. “You’re going crazy Mistress.” That was Kathrine’s voice, but Kathrine wasn’t here. No one was here. Just Catnip and the sun and the indentations her feet and tail made in the shallow sand behind her as she pushed ever onwards into the desert. A thing she’d discovered about the desert, the things that bothered her the most, were the mirages. Natural heat illusions that put her withdrawal hallucinations to shame, promising distant water only to take her deeper into the heat blasted landscape. She pleaded for water from gods who were not listening, and she walked on.
Her tongue felt like a dry and cracked door mat on the floor of her mouth. A dusty dead thing, wanting only for water. Her tail too had swelled, taking in blood and cooling it before allowing it to flow back into her body. She would have thanked Agmen, if she’d had a mind to, if she knew the benefit her tail was providing. In the evening, hardpan and sand had given way to rocky fields and scrubby grass struggling to push out of the ground. Heat baked from every stone, and even in the shade there was no relief. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust…” Catnip mumbled again. Who had said that? Roxanne? Something Roxanne had quoted to her? Roxanne was a prodigious reader, reading and devouring every word like Catnip's voracious sister devoured viscera. She’d never understood those words, but now she thought she did. There was so much of the stuff, and not a drop of water to be seen. Not even in the dry river bed she’d come across. She could smell the water at that place, but there wasn’t any. She’d dug for it, thinking that perhaps the desert had swallowed up the stream, made it flow underground. She’d come away with nothing to show for it but dirty hands and eyes too dry to produce the tears they so desperately wanted in her frustration. There were trees at that place though. Scraggly dying things that provided no shade, and tall green things covered in vicious barbs that clung to Catnips fur like painful parasites. She had to watch where she was going now, thanks to those last. The thirst would kill her sure enough, but stepping in or, god forbid, falling into a patch of those nasty things would make her current misery seem like the thirst for a glass of water at the end of a warm day.
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Where? It was that question that brought her heat addled mind to brief lucidity. “Where…” Kathrine was at the farm, but the farm was… In danger. But how to get back? An image of Medeina strapped into the passenger seat, controlling the train via the robotic control unit came to her. An interesting thought, if it had actually happened. It would have eased her a little, if not for her predicament. “What will they tell Kathrine?” She thought, “Where did mistress go?” Catnip staggered suddenly, couldn’t recover, and fell face first into a high drift of sunlit sand under the searing evening sky. “What will become of me?” She thought, before the dimness that had been lingering at the edge of her vision since the afternoon, closed in on her waking mind and snuffed it out.
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She’s being dragged. Strong hands grip her under the arms and drag her away from some kind of screaming thing. It looks like sand, but for the patches of black that breach and sink into the crust of its gritty surface. It’s like a tiny man thing, like one of the apes in the biology books Catnip had at home. One of them suddenly leaps at her, scrabbles for her tail, trying to bite it. There’s a loud report, some large gun, a shotgun of some kind, and the little creature explodes in a shower of sand and black gobbits. The ooze sinks into the ground and soon a new creature is forming and coming at them again. “Get the truck started goddamnit! For fuck sakes!” The person, it must be a man, shouts. “Just leave it! Leave it Mark!” Comes the reply, it sounds like a woman. The first man shouts back, another thundering blast punctuating his words, “Like fuck I will! Fuckin’ meaningless goddamn run, I’ll be fucked if we don’t get something off this fucking disaster! Start the fucking truck you cunt, or I swear to fuckin’ god I’ll put your sorry ass back on the slavers block so fucking fast you won’t even know you’re back in a fuckin’ collar before I’m long gone!” The man swears a lot, Catnip wants to tell him to stop. He’ll upset Kathrine, He’ll…
Night has fallen, and she’s no longer being dragged. Someone has thrown a sheet over her, and she has the sensation of movement. The kind of movement that only being in a vehicle can emulate. Gentle hands are trying to give her water, but the water cramps hit her right away. The pain is like having a cold dagger sunk and twisted into her guts and she keels over, the world lights up in a menagerie of colored spots and stars and the blackness edges back in on her vision. The hands take her by the head again, and slowly the pain passes. “Easy girl, easy.” It’s the woman’s voice again, “Drink it slow. How long have you been out here girly? What’s your name? Where you from?” More water is poured into her mouth, and she struggles with an urge to snatch the bottle and guzzle down the rest of the water. The fluid is like nectar after two days under the blazing sun. She wants to answer the questions, but her throat is cracked and parched. All that comes out is a weak croak. The woman is a mutant like Catnip. Just, like Catnip. Her fur is a light grey, her ears are more rounded, and her tail is shorter. She’s taller too, but that isn’t hard, Catnip is shorter than most normal people. “Don’t give her all the water L, we gotta make it to Prescott on what we’ve got left.” Catnip tries to see who this other, more masculine, voice is coming from but her sight fades. She gets the impression of something ugly and scarred, and then knows no more.
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“She looks like one of you Mislings L.” Muses the scarred mutant, “Different kind though. Didn’t know Mislings came with brown fur.”
“We don’t, and she isn’t, Kyle.” Says the mouse-like L as she takes the canteen from Catnips loosening grasp. “I’ve never seen a Misling with rat features before. Too bad Mark intends to sell her off.”
“Heh, well. You heard him. This entire run has been nothing but a goddamn tragedy. Whole party of scavvers wiped out by screamers, all that equipment down the hole, and we couldn’t even bring back the ordinance we found if we wanted to.”
The truck bounces along in silence for awhile, tracing a path along the sand swept road in the dim evening light. “How much do you think we can get for her, if the Misling delegation don’t decide to kick up a fuss about some unique genetic variant getting put up on the slavers block?”
L, who had come along with about a hundred similar beings from a lab dedicated to creating a cheap to maintain and fast breeding work force, said “Probably a lot. Fifty watermarks at least. Mark will try to sell her off to one of the freak shows, or even one of the cat houses. Now that I think about it, almost certainly one of the cat houses.”
“Shame.” said Kyle, who had a general distaste for slavery. Especially slavery in the sex trade. His distaste didn’t stop him of course, but it did keep him up some nights. “I guess he’ll take her to Doc Casper to get her looked over?”
L, who had been a slave herself due to outstanding debts, responded quickly, “No, hell no. Mark doesn’t go for Casper anymore. Not since that… pig… got outed for what he was doing.”
“Nasty piece of work, that. Glad we don’t gotta deal with him anymore.”
The Misling nodded enthusiastically. “Marks got sense enough to keep his merchandise out of the hands of that kiddie diddler. Still though, I guess I share your feelings about selling this one off.”
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The desert would soon give way to dense scrubland and pine forest as the elevation grew and the travelers in the truck went north, only to descend back into desert on the other side. Before that though, they would have to bypass the deadhouse that was Phoenix, a proceeding that was arduously slow. Catnip awoke once at that time, long enough to drink a few sips of water and ask where someone named “Kathrine” was. “Must have been in a caravan or something that got hit.” Kyle commented.
“This far south? I fuckin’ doubt it.” Mark said. Mark was a balding fat man with a soft complexion. “Find any gas Kyle? Tell me you managed to get some fuckin’ gas.”
“Yeah yeah, let’s hurry up. I don’t wanna be around here when the rotters catch up.” Kyle tossed the rubber hose in the back of the truck and fished out a funnel, taking a moment to check and make sure Catnip was still breathing.
“Too late boys, better get the truck fueled quick, they’re on their way.” L said, pointing back the way they came. In the distance behind, a small group of people were approaching. Weaving through the vehicles on the highway. The way they moved belied what they really were. The living dead. bodies wasted by the desert heat, the only moisture in them appearing as thick rivulets of black ichor dripping from eyes and mouths. “Get the shotgun L,” said Mark casually, “and get the truck fueled up and started Kyle, I’ll be back in a sec.”
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It was hard to miss in the desert, the lights of Prescott could be seen for miles across southern Arizona as the last waypoint into the south for what was left of the citizens of the good ol’ US of A. “Thank fuck for that.” The fat man breathed. It had been a day since they’d picked up the unconscious mutant alongside the desert road. “How many marks we got left Kyle? We’re gonna have to tank up on water in Prescott or we aren’t getting back to Pricetown without stopping.”
“Fourteen. Why did everybody have to park their goddamn cars in the fucking road?” Kyle asked bitterly. It was a question L and Mark had heard many times, and the answer was always the same. “People thought they could escape by car, you know how it is. Bunch of fucks panic, get into a traffic jam, panic grows, people start dyin’. Least’ there’s plenty of fuel to be siphoned.”
“It’ll be easier moving once we get through Prescott. The Cor will take care of us.” Said Kyle, referring to the residents of Prescott, the deformed mutants that made the last settlement at the edge of the American waste home. “Your dad still in Prescott Kyle?” Mark asked. The mutant shook his head. “Naw, Daddy went into the desert last year. Tradition you know.” Mark nodded slowly. “Sorry to hear it.”
In the back, L gave the unconscious mutant a little more water. “Still not awake huh?” She said to herself. The response, “Awake enough to hear you,” startled her. Catnips eyes fluttered open, she felt weak. Weak and hot. “Where am I?” She asked. L looked down at her, confused. “North of nowhere, you don’t know? How long have you been out here?” Catnip shook her head and tried to wrap the sheet a little tighter around herself, but couldn’t seem to get the strength to do it. L saw the move and understood Catnip’s intent, so she did it for her while noting Catnip’s shapely hips and thinly defined muscles. “You’re either a lover or a fighter girly.” L commented, but Catnip didn’t seem to understand. “I’m a mechanic.” She stated plainly. “Oh.” Said L, not sure how to respond. As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry. Catnip had already passed out again.
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“Hey Mark.” Said Prescott’s outfitter, “L. Kyle. Headin’ back to pricetown? Get a good haul?” Mark had begun to nod at the greeting until the outfitter mentioned the results of their trip into the big nowhere. “Fuck no we didn’t Rasmusin, I don’t wanna talk about it, thank ya very much. Water, we need water. How much?” Rasmusin gave his clipboard and calculator a few quick taps and came out with a number. A high number. “Shit. We can’t cut a deal?”
“Sure we can cut a deal Mark, sure.” He named another, even higher, number and Mark swore. “Fuck you Rasmusin, how about-” The sound of the dickering was drowned out in Catnips ears by the other sounds of Prescott. She was reminded strongly of her first experience at the refugee center, and the thoughts of the center that the reminder brought up made her sad. What had happened? How did she end up in this unbearably dry place? She took water, and introduced herself. The words coming to her over years of practice. The woman who identified herself as something called a “Misling,” introduced herself as “Elle.” The ugly man was introduced as Kyle, and Catnip wondered why he wouldn’t look her directly in the eye.
Despite the heat and the generally appalling appearance of it’s residents, Catnip sort of liked Prescott. From a distance, the settlement appeared huge because of all the lights, but in reality it was a bit of a facade. Prescott was really just a smallish village situated on the inner edge of the old city, and it’s mutated residents had taken great care to keep what little infrastructure they needed going. For one, the plumbing still worked, for two, the lights worked. It was a small marvel to Catnip to see lights working without being connected to a generator of some kind. The refugee center back home ran on a plutonium generator fueled by an atomic slug. The farm was powered with Catnips own “solar reactor.” And unstable device that produced no noise in summer, but was louder than the motor used to make it should have been during the winter.
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L brought her a pair of loose fitting red swim shorts with a drawstring in the front and a likewise loose fitting cotton T-shirt. The sheet she’d been provided with made for ample cover while she put them on. “Where am I?” She asked. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked that question, though she didn’t really remember the real first time, and it wouldn’t be the last either.
“Told you before girly, north of nowhere. We should be getting back to pricetown in a day or two.” L explained, only to be confused when Catnip just cocked her head and asked “Pricetown?”
“Er, yeah, Pricetown. Everybody knows Pricetown. Where have you been living Girly? Under a rock?”
“No. Dervish said it was uh… New ing-land?”
L thought Catnip was messing with her, even began to laugh a little until she saw how earnest the rat mutant was. “Your not serious? No one comes from the other side. The rockies are too dangerous, the other side is full of toxic smoke and giant monsters.” It was Catnip’s turn to be confused.
“Nuh uh, it’s better than being…” She gestured towards the open sky, “In this. How can you live when it’s so hot all the time?” If it was a joke, L didn’t think it was funny. “You’re either a crazy or a liar girly. If you are telling the truth, then how’d you get here? You’re sun addled.”
She told her story up to the point when she attacked the bishop, leaving out a few details here and there, and L listened closely. Sometime during Catnip’s oration, Kyle approached and listened in. When she’d finished, L said gently “Definetly sun sickness. Few days in the desert without water will do that to you.”
Catnip wanted to argue, wanted to insist, but the ugly mutant interrupted. “L said you claim to be a mechanic? If that’s true, I could use your help with the truck.”
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As soon as the hood was up, Catnip got to work. She took stock of every piece and part, every tube and wire, running her fingers over every inch. “Turn it over.” She requested. Kyle did so and Catnip listened carefully. She made a key turning gesture where the mutant could see it, and the engine clicked off. She listened to it run down as well. “Hm… It’ll all have to come out.” L smirked at her, but Kyle asked “What’s wrong with it? We just had it tuned before our trip.”
Catnip wiped her hands off with the sheet in the back of the truck and explained, “It’s full of sand. You know how it is, sand gets everywhere. Though… I’m not sure how it got in the fuel pump filter hose thingy mabob. If you keep running it like this, it will be ruined in no time.” She gave a few testing prods at some tubes with a screwdriver Kyle handed her. “These tubes could stand to be replaced too. Look at how cracked they are. And this wire bundle! Some of these have been snapped, I’m surprised it runs at all! The timing belt needs to be replaced and the cooling tank is nearly empty.”
“Huh, I hadn’t noticed the wires or the timing belt.” Kyle said, scratching the back of his head. “I’ll tell Mark. If it’s as bad as you say then yeah, the whole thing will need to come out. How long do you think this’ll hold us up?” Catnip did a quick burst of arithmetic, throwing away the results when she’d finished since they had no bearing on the question asked and the answer likely being both wrong and inapplicable to the repair at hand. “A day. Make it two, three at most. Do you have chocolate? I accept chocolate, shinies, and plutonium cells.”
L scoffed. “Chocolate? Plutonium? Girly, how about ‘we just saved you from dying in the desert?’ The least you could do is fix our truck.” L had forgotten about calling Catnip a crazy or a liar. Maybe she was a mechanic after all. A free check up on the truck would be sure to please Mark a little. “Alright," said Kyle, "I’ll go tell Mark and get some tools. Oh, and a word of advice Catnip, don’t drink the water around here unless you want to end up like me.” He waggled his eyebrows and gestured towards his face, his lopsided eyes and malformed skull showing the results of drinking the water of Prescott.
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As Catnip watched Kyle go, a woman approached cradling a camera on a sling. From her appearance, she wasn’t a local and Catnip was a little in awe of how incredibly tall she was. Apart from her height, she was also quiet thin, and covered head to tail in bright scales that reminded Catnip of Dee. Where Dee’s scales were a mottled brown and tan though, this woman’s were a collection of black, red, and orange stripes running up and down her limbs and back while her belly from groin to chin was a pale yellow. “Hey there!” She said, “I’ve never seen a misling with brown fur before! Can I take your picture lady?” L scowled at her, “Get out of here kid.”
“Kid?” Catnip thought, looking up into the face of the distinctly serpentine woman. She huffed, “Hey, let her say if she wants it taken or not. What are you? Her owner?” L’s scowl deepened into a truly vile glare, but Catnip interrupted the growing tension. “Sure. I have a camera too, but it’s not here.” She introduced herself, and the tall “girl” did likewise. “Catnip? Groovy, I’m Leslie.” Catnip rubbed her eyes after the flash of the camera’s sizable bulb. “Are you guys headed for Pricetown? I am. I heard they need a photographer for some newspaper thing they are setting up out there. Hey lady, take my picture with Catnip would you? Please?” L took the camera, momentarily considered throwing it away, and then decided she needed to ease up. No need to be a bitch. Catnip had to stand on the trucks quarter panel just to stand shoulder to shoulder with Leslie. Until now, Lilith had been the tallest person Catnip had ever met. “Say cheese!” L said. Catnip and Leslie did so, and once again Catnip was momentarily blinded.
Leslie's tongue flicked out, caressing one of the collection of pictures. “Thanks lady, it means a lot. I gotta get lots of pictures for my portfolio.” Leslie said, taking back her camera. Catnip wondered what a “portfolio” was, but she understood the need to take lots of pictures. Once upon a time, Catnip had spent a lot of time taking pictures of things. It was a hobby she didn’t pursue much anymore. She was thinking about it when Leslie tapped her on the shoulder.
“Here Catnip, I ran a copy off for you too!” Catnip took the polaroid and examined it. Leslie had put her fingers up behind Catnip’s head as a pair of mock rabbit ears, even as Catnip was doing the same to her. “Pfft.” Leslie said, “We sure do make a pair yeah? Maybe we’ll meet up again in Pricetown?”
Catnip nodded, perhaps they would.
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“Mark says no.” Kyle reported, rolling his eyes. Catnip’s expression became something like a cross between disappointment and anguish. “But- But it’s gonna break!” She insisted, the idea of simply letting it happen filling her with a horrid dismay. Kyle Shrugged and shook his head. “He says we can’t afford the expense in time or money.”
“The expense in time and money is only going to be greater if it isn’t tuned up now.” L growled. Over the last half hour since the photographer had approached them, L and Catnip had talked casually. As usual, Catnip had endeared herself to the person she was talking to through natural charm and naivete. The mutant could see this. Furthermore, he could hear it in the way L spoke. “Our hands are tied guys, I’m sorry. We can’t even replace the timing belt or top off the coolant. Mark’s being pretty tight fisted about everything right now.” He explained, adding “I’m not really expecting to get paid myself anymore.”
Catnip didn’t want to spend more time in the desert. Prescott was still hot as hell, but it was relative paradise compared to the explosive heat of what L explained to be the “sonoran” desert. If the truck broke down, and she knew it would, she would be stuck in it again. Or at least stuck in the hills outside Prescott. That thought wasn’t so unnattractive, Prescott likely had plenty of places to pick up parts and fuel and tools nearby. Maybe the truck would go down just outside Prescott even. Then they could simply walk back into town, maybe get someone to give them a tow, and then Catnip would be allowed to get to work in the comfort of a town filled with ugly as sin, but undeniably friendly, mutants. Maybe…
“We got a single can of fuel and enough water to get the hell out of this shithole.” Mark barked at the trio, making them jump. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We have a deadline to meet.”
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An hour and about forty miles later, the truck did just as Catnip said it would. As it crested a low hill, Mark made a simple gear shift and was rewarded with a loud bang. Something under the hood emitted a tooth grinding screech, and the tortured engine cut out.
Under the high drone of the trucks horn blaring it’s single note, one could hear the repetitive offensive noise of a balding fat man screaming epithets into the steering wheel. L had put her fingers in her ears and hadn’t taken them out until Kyle had tugger on her elbow and given her a pair of ear plugs. Catnip on the other hand didn’t bother. She’d heard much louder things on a regular basis back home. Machine gun fire, the report of her friends tank firing its main gun, various explosions, her sister screeching in her ears, and even the divine roar of the Catnip Express. “The horn is gonna run out of air.” She shouted over the noise. Soon enough, this prediction too was confirmed as the horn wound down.
“How far away from that town are we?” Catnip asked. The ugly mutant checked his watch and told her. Too far to walk back, it was the one thing Catnip hadn’t wanted. “I guess we better start walking. I’m not looking forward to this.” L said. The truck whirred. “Get back in the fucking truck.” Mark shouted at them.
“Trucks not gonna move Mark. We’re gonna head back to town.”
“We’ll never make it back before dark, get back in the fucking truck.”
Catnip packed a few of the tools she thought she’d need, sliding them into a canvas carryall found in the trucks storage. “ Too far to walk, we can pick up parts or maybe another car somewhere along the way.”
He scowled at her, “Get the fuck back in the fucking truck, I’m not walking anywhere and we aren’t getting another fucking car.” Catnip didn’t like his attitude. It seemed to have taken on a condescending commanding tone. She offered to fix the truck, the offer had been denied. Not just denied, denied aggressively. When the truck had broke down, she’d offered to walk until she found parts or a new car. In return, she met staunch resistance. “Ok, but no. You guys want to help?”
L and Kyle silently went about the task of collecting up tools and supplies, leaving enough water for Mark. “Ready?” Kyle asked. “Ready.” Catnip said. Instead of walking towards Prescott, the trio went north. There had been nothing between Prescott and the place where the truck had finally died, but the road ahead had plenty of rest stops. They were sure they could find what they sought at any of those places.
-
The three of them talked as they walked, and Catnip found L and Kyle to be ready conversationalists. From L she learned about the Misling and from Kyle she learned what there was to know about the Cor.
Simply put, the Misling were humans mutated into a small selection of rodent forms. Specifically, mice. There were a few bird and ferret Misling, but these were anomalies. Incapable of reproducing. The Misling were made from America’s cast offs, mainly homeless people abducted off the streets. For most of them, the transformation into a virile workforce had been traumatic but beneficial. For one, it got those of them who were addicted to drugs off the crap they were putting in their bodies. For two, it had provided them with food and shelter until the cataclysm began. “That was when the AI in the lab went apeshit.” L explained, “Took all the handlers and scientists and turned them into Misling too. We managed to shut it down about two years later and escaped. Since then, we’ve been mostly living and working in pricetown.” L herself went on to explain that before her transformation, she’d been out on the streets because of a gambling problem. After the Cataclysm, it had got her in trouble. “But that’s none of your business.” She told Catnip.
The Cor on the other hand weren’t the result of a controlled experiment. Instead, they were the result of poor handling of Prescott’s water supply. Someone had mixed the wrong batch of “stuff” up at the ol’ water treatment plant. “Something in the filters I guess. Turned everybody into freaks.” Kyle said casually, “Even other mutants can’t drink the water, so we pass out bottled to visitors and warn them away. Whole sections of Old Prescott don’t even get water anymore since we shut the valves. You don’t wanna be a Cor, death ain’t pretty for us. Most of us are sterile, thank god.”
“They explode when they die.” L explained. Catnip looked at the deformed man with a bit of sympathy and confusion. “She’s telling the truth. It’s a… messy sort of death. No fuckin’ clue why whoever installed those damn filters had to turn us all into volatile freaks. My daddy went not long ago, wandered off into the desert. We do that, so nobody else has to see it or clean up the mess.”
“I’m sorry…” Catnip said, not sure what else there was to say. She didn’t know what having a father was like, except maybe a little. She thought about Floyd, and wondered how he was taking her disappearance. She hoped he hadn’t gotten hurt in the attack, hoped he didn’t believe she was dead.
“No need to be sorry, just our lot in life. Besides, so far as I can tell, we live full lives. My daddy was eighty six. Remembered the good ol’ days. Liked to bitch about ‘the liberals’ and their ‘commie leaders.’ Heh. I guess I’ll miss the old guy. Uh… gimme a sec.” Kyle seemed to be overcome suddenly as his lips seemed to squirm a little. He turned quickly from Catnip and L so they couldn’t see his face and crossed the road. It was like he’d gone to examine something only he could see, but Catnip could hear the sounds he was making. She guessed that even here in this place, it was sad times.
-
“Hey, hey, hey, we are in luck ladies.” Kyle put on an accent Catnip didn’t recognize. Dee did something similar when he was trying to be clever, but Catnip understood the references Dee was making about as much as she would understand the finances of the towing company which owned the small building she and her new friends had come to.
The sign above the door claimed that the building had been a branch of “South by Southwest Towing.” Catnip read this with the laborious slowness of one who has only recently gained a grasp of basic reading comprehension. “What’s towing?” She asked. L gave her a look that Catnip was coming to understand was disbelief.
“Exactly what we are looking for girly. If the batteries are still good in any of these auto-tows, we could go back and haul the truck here for repairs! We should have remembered that this was here, Mark probably wouldn’t have been such a dick.” L said. In new england, Catnip had never seen an “auto-tow.” The auto-tows were lined up along the front of the building like a small fleet of refrigerators on wheels. Each one reminded Catnip of the robotic street sweeps that Hector had pulled back to the farm for her to salvage for parts except that instead of a scoop and a series of brushes, each auto-tow was equipped with two wedge shaped things and a pair of cables with hooks above those. Catnip could see how they worked right away, the wedges would adjust, and had a depression to hold a vehicle's wheels in place while the cables ensured that the car being pulled wouldn’t slip off the back. She was willing to bet that some straps would have been slung over the top of the wheels to add a bit more stability. She checked one, and found a set of exactly that in the auto-tow’s storage compartment.
“What do you think Catnip?” L asked a little nervously. They’d only been on speaking terms for a day, but already L had begun to differ unto Catnip for the question of mechanics, and it made her feel a bit smug.
“I think the batteries are dead.” Catnip said after a cursory examination of only six of the ten devices. “They’ve been sitting too long in some kind of idle state, these things will never move again unless they can get recharged.” She pulled at a plug attached to the front of one of the auto-tows, and found that the plug was attached to a self winding spool of electrical cable. “That’s clever.” She commented off hand. “Maybe they have something else we can use, we can at least look through all the cars out here to see if any of them still run. She shaded her eyes from the harsh light, and wondered if she might convince L to help her find a hat. Kyle saved her the effort by emerging from the towing office with a baseball cap in her size. “I noticed you squinting a lot Nip, not used to the sun? How about the auto-tows, any of them usable?” She explained the situation, and he sighed. “Alright. You're right, I guess we could find something else. Hope for the best and expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed. If you ladies wanna get started, I’ll join you in a sec. I’m gonna go around back and tap a kidney.”
-
“Thanks for sharing Kyle.” L snarked. “C’mon Catnip, let’s do some window shopping.”
The fence around the yard wasn’t difficult to bypass with the bolt cutters they had brought from the truck. Once inside though, Catnip was irritated to find that one side of the fence had been ripped down in a pile of twisted chain link, corrugated metal, and razor wire. “It’s hard to tell through all the cars and sheet metal Catnip. What about this one?” L stopped and made an exaggerated pose over an expensive looking convertible. “It’s very nice, but there’s only room for three, if someone sits on somebody's lap.” L giggled awkwardly, which suggested to Catnip that the idea embarassed her. Catnip popped the hood on the candy red vehicle and took a look inside. “It looks alright… Hey, if this Mark guy is so hung up on money like Kyle says, what if we brought him a couple cars?”
“It’s a good idea, but cars aren’t really in demand because Pricetown is too crowded to drive around.” L told her, “Mark isn’t much of a salesman anyway.” Catnip checked the car’s oil level, then noticed something odd. “Hey L.” She said, “The starter thingy is gone.”
This was a theme with all the cars in the lot. One after another, Catnip would run through her list of things to check until she got to the starter. In each and every vehicle, the starter had been removed. “Weird.” Catnip said, scratching her head in wonder. “That’s a very specific bit of damage for every single one to have isn’t it?”
“It’s not damage.” L sighed, “They must have removed the starters to keep people from stealing them. Anyone can hot wire a car or have a key made. Back then they could anyway.” It was a bit disappointing. Especially since they had come all this way in the uncomfortable heat. The two of them stood there in mutual discomfort at the way they had both begun to sweat and stink with exertion. For the first time, Catnip complained openly about the heat, and L checked her watch. “Do you think we could find and get a starter installed-” L began, but just then, they both sensed something had changed, causing their ears to perk and Catnip’s long whiskers to twitch. “Did you hear that?” Catnip had, it sounded like shouting. It sounded like Kyle shouting.
-
The scorpion had lived long in the hills north of Prescott, fighting rivals and winning mates. Defending it’s territory and siring generation after generation of little scorpionlings. It knew itself to be larger than it’s usual ilk, which made it the most formidable of it’s kind. Predator or prey, not a single creature could bring it down or evade it for long. It was the apex of this land.
It’s downfall was not some rival or foe, but little more than an errant spore drifting on the wind. Perhaps the spore simply landed on the scorpion, or maybe it was in something the beast had eaten. Either way, the result was the same: A rapidly growing fungal colony taking up residence in it’s fantastic carapace. The fungus spread from it’s point of entry, finding it’s way into every available space, subverting the flesh, springing forth from it’s body in loose tendrils, converting the toxins in it’s tail to its own purposes, and now… Now it was spreading its tendrils into the scorpions simple brain. Soon, the scorpion would be dead and all that would remain was the fungus puppeted corpse spreading its payload of deadly spores across the desert. The huge scorpion sensed movement and voices. The time of day was all wrong, even the fungal bloom exploding inside it’s body told it the time was wrong, but the scorpion didn’t listen. For the last time, the beast left it’s den and made it’s way towards the building that sat at the western edge of it’s territory.
The thing Worrying the vehicle Kyle had retreated into was the largest scorpion Catnip had ever seen. It was also, the first. It raised it’s back end, preparatory to striking, then lowered it again weakly. “Don’t go near it Catnip, it’s infested!” L hissed. Catnip didn’t know what that meant, but she could guess. The scorpion looked unhealthy, with several flexible tendrils poking straight out from creases in its carapace, and the whole creatures coloration had taken on a grey caste. The claws pushed at the truck again, trying to find something it could grip onto so it could wrench the door off and get the ugly morsel inside.
-
L drew her pistol, a small two shot Catnip knew as a “fastball” and L called her “deringer,” and then hesitated. “Shoot it!” Catnip cried, snatching up a heavy pry bar laying nearby. The scorpion seemed to hear them, and tried to turn. “I can’t Nip, it might-” The scorpion showed what it might do by suddenly shivering, causing itself to erupt in a cloud of dark grey dust. L screamed, “Mycus! Mycus! Mycus!” and skipped back. A breeze caught the cloud of spores and whiffed it away, revealing the charging scorpion, tail up, claws bared. “Shoot it!” Cat cried again, catching a bit of the panic being exuded by the Misling. The scorpion came on, claws snapping at L, who did little more than shriek in what Catnip saw as unreasonable horror. In truth, L was nearly out of her mind with terror. Catnip didn’t know it, but the creature before her was infested with the greatest threat the lands west of the rockies knew.
Catnip swung her bar, making hard contact with one huge claw and cracking the unnaturally softened chitin. A small puff of dust flew from the surface of the over sized insect, and the tendrils on it’s back seemed to reach for her. L next cry was one of angry dismay, and the next sound from her direction was the sound Catnip hoped to hear; a pair of gunshots. The first shot found it’s home in one swollen grey eye, while the second simply struck at an odd angle and glanced off. The thing simply ignored the damage to it’s eye and spun on Catnip, trying to sting her. The tail was fast, and Catnip was barely faster. She rolled and dropped her improvised cudgel, taking up instead the remains of a car door which she placed between she and it. The tail came in again and again, trying to inject not poison, but the filthy grey ick that had supplanted it. The scorpion was driven on by the malignant growth in it’s body, driven to spread the otherworldly fungal bloom, infest other creatures with it. The scorpion's tail struck the door again, and this time it came through the window and missed the ratling by inches. It was fortunate that the tail then hooked on the window frame, but unfortunate that the scorpion shivered again at that moment. Another billowing cloud of grey dust, stinking unpleasantly of mold and decay, consumed Catnip. It burned her lungs until the breeze cleared it, and she saw that the scorpion was having difficulty dislodging the door. Kyle had emerged and was racking the sawed off mossberg he’d brought along from the truck. He fired once, twice, and three times. With each shot, the scorpion jerked and catnip saw the thick grey soup of it’s blood fly. With the third, the infested scorpion simply lay in the sand, and died. “Is it-” Catnip began to ask, wanting to know if it was dead, when suddenly the scorpion’s back bloated out, and burst, disgorging about a dozen small grey balloon like things. Kyle fired at them, reloading thrice and blowing each one away in a puff of thick moldy smoke.
“Well, that was exciting. I guess I need a-” Catnip started, but L tackled her to the ground. “Ohgodohgodohgod!” She said, the words streaming from her like vomit, “KYLE! KYLE!” Kyle didn’t need to be called, he sprinted to the cab of the truck he’d been trapped in and grabbed his bag, then hastily brought it to L. She dumped the contents out and seized a plastic bag of grainy white powder. Catnip struggled against her, and she swore. “IT’S FOR YOUR GOOD CATNIP! EAT IT! EAT IT YOU BITCH! I’M SORRY!” The stuff was foul and dry and L was dumping it down her throat while Kyle held her mouth open. For good measure, L also downed a handful, as did Kyle. They let her go, and Catnip scooted away from them on her butt, spitting and sputtering, “What the fuck!? Why-” Kyle stopped her, gently, and tried to explain, while L tried her best to curl up and look small, some past trauma now plainly visible in her bearing. “Mycus Catnip. Don’t you know what Mycus is?” She shook her head slowly, distrustfully. Kyle looked to L skeptically, but there was no help there so he went on. “It’s a fungus… thing. It takes over your body and spreads itself around, invading everything. Everything in the east is covered in it. That’s why no one has been beyond the rockies. I don’t know how you got here Catnip, but if you are telling the truth, then you can’t be here. No one gets through the rockies without succumbing to the Mycus. It completely erases who you are and takes your body. You might as well be dead.” Kyle sat down before making his final point, “I’m sorry we had to force that shit on you Nip, I swear it was for your own good. It’s antifungus from Rat King, it’ll kill the Mycus and keep it from taking hold.” The implication was obvious to Catnip at once. She was far from home and the one thing keeping her away from the farm, her friends, and her Kathrine, was a mountain of deadly mold. “All of it?” She asked, “there isn’t a way around?”
Kyle could only shake his head slowly, and L shivered on, reliving memories of a terror too great to detail.
-
They all sat inside the office waiting for the clouds of Mycus to dissipate. “It’s just the airborne stuff you gotta watch out for, so long as you don’t touch the immature fungal bed and that stuff we gave you will keep you safe from the spores stuck in your fur for awhile.” Kyle said, looking out in the back field at the exploded scorpion. Catnip had eyes for the truck he’d hidden in instead. A large, old fashioned, diesel powered, International Harvester pickup truck with a towing rig. Catnip had fallen in love with it. “We could use that.” She said, pointing at it. She could almost see how it had once looked before time and slight modification had taken their toll. Cherry red paint, company logo, even a tow truck driver sitting in the cab and waving. The vision was beautiful. “The tires look fine, I bet they are uh… aftermarket?”
“I doubt it runs Nip, it’s way too old.” L said, “If you wanna go check it out, fine, but I’m not going back there near that… that.” L was referring to the fresh bed of soft looking grey moss that had sprung up around the punished corpse of the giant bug. Kyle pulled out a small carbon fiber tube with a pair of lenses like a telescope and looked at the truck. “Yeah, plasticore. Aftermarket as hell. That’s a good sign. If she wants to take a look, I’ll go with her L.” he said. L was already drifting off with her own thoughts, and didn’t hear.
-
L watched the two working on the the truck through the plate glass window. Watching but not seeing. The distant terrified look in her eyes bother catnip. "What's wrong with L?" She asked, glancin again at the misling while she worked.
"Nothings wrong with her." Kyle said, "Well... That's not really right."
"What is right?" She asked. The truck would run, Catnip could see that. The best part was, everything she needed was at hand or could be found in a nearby siding. The task would be simplicity itself under her skilled hands.
"All I know is that the Searing Spear found her dehydrated and half starved in the cellar of a cabin in the middle of a mycus patch." Kyle said, low as if L could hear them through the window. "I think it preys on her. The memory I mean..." Catnip supposed she knew what that meant. Some unpleasant memories had a way of creeping up on you, springing at you like a predator lashing out from ambush. She had an image of her sister stalking Kathrine, the way she had climbed down the wall towards her, and shivered. She hoped that Mica was keeping her promise.
The blanket of memory had unfurled in L's mind, the eye of recollection wide open. She was running again. It hurt and shamed her to be running, but she had no choice. Not really. It was the choice of the coward, and to her it was right that it should be so. If she'd had the guts to do what needed to be done, she wouldn't now be fleeing from her family.
The cabin had seemed like the place to go, to hide from them, but it had been a deathtrap. L, then known as Elle Ericson, locked herself in the cabin cellar and waited in the dark. For a week, she sucked condensation from dry pipes, and ate through the small stockpile of canned food she found in the basement. When the canned food was gone, she began eating from a bag of dog food. It made her feel sick, but it was better than nothing. The worst part though had been the voices.
"Come out darling," Came the droning idiot voice of the fungal infested corpse of her husband, "Come out and let me hold you. I long for your touch." She'd closed out the voices, covering her ears with her hands.
Then came the dirtiest, most heart breaking of attempts to get her out of the cellar. "Mama." The voice of her runt whispered. "Mama come out."
Elle broke down. The mycus was cruel, and virulent. Her youngest, Missy, had been stung by some kind of tendril as they'd traveled. Her husband had hacked the tendril apart, but the infection was already in her. The Wyoming country was clear, it was supposed to be free of mycus. That had changed, and soon the family of six was traveling back towards pricetown. Missy changed quickly, but Elle couldn't do what needed to be done, wouldn't let Henry do what needed to be done. Then her boys had begun to get sick, to come down with mycus infection, and she fled from them.
Three weeks passed beneath that cabin. Three maddening weeks. Then, the searing spear had come. Pricetowns elite guard armed with thermic lances and flamethrowers, responding to reports of the fungal growth they'd been organized to fight. They swept through the patch, burning it to ash, destroying what was left of the fungal zombies gathered there. Elle was found, half mad and half dead. Rescued at last, but down in the dark of the burning cabins cellar she left a part of herself that would remain there forever.
She gambled and drank to forget, and she lost frequently. In the end, she accrued a debt that she couldn't hope to work off and was put into debt slavery. In time, the pain eased but in the dark of the night she could still hear them. In the shadows of her room, at the edge of her senses, their droning idiot voices came back to her.
*VROOOM*
-
The truck roared to life and Catnip jumped, slamming down the hood and yipping her success to the sky. If the truck suddenly and noisily coming to life didn't pull L from her dire recollection, Catnip sprinting to the window and pounding on it with the palms of her hands most certainly did. "It runs L! It runs!" The truck behind her lurched forward with Kyle behind the wheel. He waved to L, showing a smile that almost glowed with delight. The small patch seemed to lean in the direction of the truck, perhaps sensing it's vibrations but unable to reach whatever it was disrupting the air. Once the truck was out of the back yard and Catnip back inside talking L's ear off, Kyle went back with a jar of diesel set the dangerous patch aflame.
"Can you imagine what we could get done with a tow truck like that? The kind of stuff we could haul?" Catnip asked. L grimaced, the mechanic had grand ideas and grand plans. L had seriously grown to like her like a long time friend in only a couple days. She could tell that Kyle felt something too. Catnip wanted to earn her keep, earn her way home. She would certainly earn, but not her keep and not in the way she seemed to think.
Kyle came back around, tossing both their tools and some scavenged parts and supplies into the tow truck. "Kyle," L called, "Kyle can I talk to you? In private?" She glanced at Catnip playing with the crane and making adjustments.
"Yeah, sure, what do you need L?" Kyle asked. He didn't like the conflict he saw in the set of her body, but how could he when he felt it too?
"Kyle, are we really going to do this? I mean... Can we really just let Mark..." She couldn't finish, but she didn't have to.
"Put a collar on her? I don't know. I don't want to, and I can see you don't either."
"What are we going to do?"
"I don't know. I think I'll talk to Mark when we get back, maybe he'll-"
"He won't though! That's the real problem isn't it?!" L shouted, anger rising to the front of her mind. She knew as well as Kyle did that once his mind was made up, Mark wasn't going to change it. More, this whole scavenging trip had been one massive financial loss. Mark would take the easy way out and sell off what he could. It didn't matter if the debtors gave him time to pay them off or not, he wouldn't want the responsibility hanging over his head. It wasn't just Catnip either, Kyle saw. L was still technically a debt slave. He could just as easily slap a collar back around her neck as well as Catnip's if it crossed his mind to.
Catnip was watching them, grinning a sly ratty grin ear to ear at them. Pleased as punch to be helping out. Happy to be working, doing something she loved. Kyle and L looked back, smiling their troubled smiles. Were they really going to clap this young girl in irons and sell her to the highest bidder? This young, talented mechanic who wanted nothing more than to help as best she could and find a way home?
"Maybe..." Whispered L, "We should just... leave him behind?" Kyle didn't say anything. They couldn't do that. As much as they disliked it, they couldn't leave him. Not because they couldn't, but because Catnip most likely wouldn't.
"She has no idea." Kyle said ashamedly.
-
The trip back was quiet except for catnips talk. Her chatter had taken on the sound of babble by virtue of L and Kyle's silence. Every new story, each tale large and small, each shared facet of catnip's life made that silence all the deeper. L and Kyle weren't slavers, and so didn't know the the first rule of the trade. Never get to know your stock. She told them about the farm, about the refugee center, about her sister and her man, and most of all she told them about Kathrine. Life on the other side of the Rockies, beyond the lands possessed by the mycus.
The tow truck crested a rise and the junked truck came into view. Mark had attempted to push it and in so doing, managed to put it in a ditch not ten feet or so from where they left it. Mark sat like a malignant toad in the driver's seat, looking pissed. Catnip leaned out the drivers side window and waved, and Mark waved back. L didn't like the way that first bitter expression had gone like a mirage to be replaced by the new look. His face looked happy, pleased, but it didn't look genuine to her. Not to Kyle either for that matter. Catnip backed the tow truck up to Mark's loaner truck and while she was getting everything squared away L, Kyle, and Mark stepped aside to talk.
-
"Cozy as three devils ain't ya?" Mark said, fiddling with something like a chain of metal spheres. L knew all too well what that chain was, she'd worn one herself for a time. "Only been gone all day and you're all best fuckin' buds. I should have expected that shit from sally soft hearts like you two." Kyle ignored that, but L had to avert her eyes.
Kyle took out the pack of cigarettes he kept on hand. Not a smoker, these he mostly kept to offer around. "Let's talk Mark." He said, proffering the pack. Mark pushed the pack back and scowled at him. Kyle though took one out and put it in his mouth, but had trouble lighting it. The wind was too high.
"Can I have one of those?" Catnip said. She'd taken notice the moment the pack was out and had come over to bum a cigarette. Not a pack a day girl, not yet anyway, but she had begun to feel the need in times of excitement or stress. The wind died down long enough to light the cigarette, and Mark offered her the chain.
"Here," He said, painting the false friendliness back on, "A gift, I guess." Catnip puffed the cigarette and looked at it. Before Kyle or L could stop her, she'd already taken it and put it on.
"It's so pretty!" She said, "Thanks! L, how do I look?" But L wasn't looking at her, couldn't look at her. Something was wrong. Kyle looked furious and ashamed, he said, "That's cold Mark. Real cold."
"And? Easiest money I'll ever make." He pulled a second chain, a bit more battered perhaps, from his pocket along with an item that looked like a small remote. The chain he tossed at L. "Put it on L."
"B-but Mar-"
"No 'but Marks,' just put it the fuck on." He snapped, "And no shit from you. Throw that piece in the truck." The last was directed at Kyle. Mark held the remote, almost challenging the mutant to try something.
"Mark, c'mon, you aren't even going to-" Kyle started.
"Nope. I don't know what kind of arguments you fuckers got, but a plan is a plan and I've lost too much on this whole trip to turn back now."
"Mark, she can help us. She will help us, and the debt guys will give us an extension. They'll-"
"They'll what? Slap me down with a bunch of late fees and interest? What about the contractors that hired out you and the rest of the scavvers? Dead scavvers are more expensive than live ones. Plus the water, the food, the tools. Jesus, the fucking loss." Mark had started calmly enough, but now he was working into a good frothing rage. "While you were off fucking about with your 'friends,' I was back here doing the math. You know what we got? What I got? A twenty five thousand water mark debt, that's what. That ain't even including what I gotta pay you."
Kyle smirked at that, "We both know, you ain't gonna pay me." The idea that Mark would still pay Kyles fee after all that had happened was a joke, he'd worked for the man for three years and knew for a fact that the fist of the man was as tighter around his money than the vault at Kings court.
Mark grinned evilly. "Sure as shit sticks to a blanket. Why would I pay the guy who sabotaged the whole job?"
Kyles face fell. "What?" He said, flabbergasted. L was watching now in horror, clutching at Catnip who didn't understand what was going on at all.
"Sure, I can get a waiver for the scavvers fees. Just tell em you threw a wrench in the works, killed some people, and tried to make off with the take. I had to shoot you down Kyle, it's a tragedy to be sure and the shattered helm won't like it, but it saves them the time of investigation."
Kyle stared at him, "You can't be serious."
-
"As a heart attack 'buddy.'" said Mark. Catnip knew, even before arriving back at the truck, that something bad was happening. It didn't take the sudden appearance of a gun in marks other hand for her to figure that out. It did take her off guard though.
"Um. What's going on?" She asked, moving to get between the two men. Mark shoved her, hard.
"Quiet. The men are talking." Mark said. Kyle sneered at that remark and tried to think of some bit of snark to throw in Marks face. Instead, he switched topic.
"Mark, just think about it. She's a fantastic mechanic. You could hire her out to the aeroponics people, or put her up with the howling tower maintenance people. She's-"
Kyle felt the shot before he heard it. The little toy like pistol still packed a wallop, and all that wallop was directed into his guts. L was screaming, being held back by Catnip. The latter's face had taken on an intensely blank look. "Nothing in her eyes." Kyle thought in a disconnected way.
"You know Kyle, this really is for the best. I mean, I am so fucking sick of you second guessing my decisions. Always questioning me. That shit stops now. I've made up my mind." Mark said, "this is how it's gotta be."
From the corner of his eye, Mark saw Catnip diving for him. For his gun. A split second later, he heard the hissing and spitting. He simply stood and grinned.
"*HAGHK*" wretched Catnip. The movement had been minute, but the effect was instantaneous. Mark depressed a button on the remote and Catnip was stricken with a sickening sense of vertigo that had her rolling and wretching. To her it felt like she'd taken a shot of "BBQ saus" without the warmth of drunkenness that came with it. L ran to Kyle, but her collar to had activated, sending it's vibrations into her skull, making every movement like trying to maneuver the deck of a ship on rough seas. She stumbled, and tripped over Catnip, then lay still.
"You better hope to God you're far away when-" as if the sound of Kyle's voice had suddenly reminded him of the mutants presence, Mark turned suddenly and shot him again, high in the leg. Kyle fell side ways, clutching both leg and stomach.
"No shit, what did you think I'd stick around to watch the fireworks?" Mark said, "No, I plan to be back in Pricetown by morning."
"Get in the fucking truck, cunt. Take your best fuckin' friend with you." Mark said, gesturing with the remote towards L and Catnip. "See ya Kyle, say hi to the screamers for me."
Kyle tried to say something, but Mark kicked him in the face and rolled him, taking Kyle's pocket knife and a small wad of watermarks. The mutant tried to pass out. Pass out or die. Dying would be a fantastic thing to do with the bastard rummaging through his pockets. Instead, he strained against the pain, and watched as the truck pulled away into the darkening horizon.
-
They drove on through the night. Catnip and L sitting in the plain white truck being towed by Mark in the brick red tow truck. At around midnight, the wind picked up and the sound of it passing through the lifeless cab of the white truck was almost like the moans of a dying man. Catnip sat, stunned, hardly able to believe the turn the day had taken and not understanding what would happen next. She wanted to be home, she wanted her Kathrine. Instead, all she had was the sparse clothing she'd been given and a necklace that made her feel horribly sick at the press of a button. For the first time in a long time, Catnip began to cry. Hearing it, L too began to do the same and still they continued on in the dark.
Catnip awoke with a start from a dream in which she returned home from a trip to the refugee center and found the farm ages abandoned. "How long have I been gone?" She had asked the still air, but there had been no answer. She had awoken early to the cold blue desert dawn, an hour before the sun was set to rise. The place to which they were headed stuck out like a mole in the desert. To Catnip, it was the largest settlement she'd ever seen. Winding streets, buildings, towers, farms, smoke lazily drifting from chimneys and smoke stacks, and lights. So many lights. Yet, not a single vehicle moving except on the outskirts. The entire valley had a sense of life about it, the sounds of early morning people getting ready for another day of hard work or play. Ahead and below, lay Pricetown. In Pricetown, lay Catnips future and all the trials of the next year.
In that city in the desert, she would find the beginning of her long road home.
-
INTERMISSION
On Pricetown
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-
Pricetown is a medium sized post-cataclysm city in Arizona near the north-west corner of the state, an hour from the borders of both Utah and Nevada. In the pre-cataclysm world, Pricetown had been the site of a copper strike in the early 1900s. From that strike sprung Pricetown, the very picture of a an old west boom town. Like any boom town though, the crash inevitably occurred seven years later when the mines suddenly and inexplicably dried up. Efforts were made to find a new vein, and when the search failed the town, like the mine, dried up. The years passed and the number of residents dwindled down to less than one hundred, a farcry from the ten thousand it had housed in it's hay day. Then, in early 2027, the government had purchased the small town lock, stock, and barrel for an undisclosed sum from the family who had owned it for the last thirty years. At first, it was simply kept for housing the soldiers from the base constructed soon after the town's purchase. Later, as tensions with China began to heat up, a refugee center and amenities we're constructed. In secret, a government lab had also been constructed beneath the new center.
When everything kicked off, the little town of Pricetown, which had gone from ten thousand, to less than one hundred, then up to one thousand, was suddenly home to nearly ten thousand people again. Over the next year, that number would plummet. The undead, the outsiders, and especially the screamers took almost 2/3 of Pricetownss residents.
It was decided that the only way to keep Pricetown alive, was to build a wall and in the second year the people began construction of fortifications and the training of a militia. Soon after, the Misling came out of the mountains to the east, bringing with them their large families and a new threat close on their heels; the mycus. Pricetowns population once again fluctuated wildly up and down as the fast breeding mouse like mislings added their number to the normal human residents, the mycus took it's toll, and Pricetown burned.
When the smoke cleared, both literally and metaphorically, the searing spear and the shattered helm emerged from the ashes. The first, brave men and women willing to take the fight to the mycus, using the technology and mutagens from the lab under Pricetown. Thermic lances and swords wreathed in green fire, flame throwers with high pressure tanks, plasma flingers to rain death on the fungal menace, fire which could be produced at the snap of a finger, skins to shed the heat, and masks to filter out the smoke, the ash, and the spores. The second, the shattered helm, were to become Pricetowns regular militia, armed with more conventional weaponry from the military instillation armory and shields. Shields to take the brunt of the blow from the furious undead or to move in formation against a wall of such, shotguns to scatter the packs of glistening screaming sand creatures, assault rifles to spill righteous thunder into other worldly beasts, and rigorous training to hold strong against the enclosing abomination the world around them had become.
Currently, Pricetowns residents include human, misling, cor, and a mix of other mutants and cyborgs. Misling adult residents outnumber all others three to one, misling children outnumbering adults of all kinds in roughly the same amount.
Poverty is high with roughly one third of it's inhabitants being below the poverty line. A majority of Pricetowns poor are, unsurprisingly, Misling.
Agriculture is primarily in basic crops (corn, tomatoes, beans) grown in one of Pricetowns growing number of aeroponics facilities.
Pricetowns closest neighbor is Prescott to the South. To the west and northwest are Algol, Lodi, and Mead. All of which are small towns. To the north is Prescott's rival city Chaseville. There are only smaller towns and settlements in the west, less and less the closer one gets to the Rocky mountains.
A majority of Pricetowns buildings older buildings are concrete while newer construction is composed of adobe, scrap metal/wood, or rough quarried sandstone. The last is especially susceptible to mycus infestation and so has to be scorched four times a year. As such, it is reserved for the poorer neighborhoods. Wood is reserved for Pricetowns richer inhabitants.
Pricetowns currency is two. The first, is ammunition. A great deal of ammo was used in the coming of the mycus. Soon after, it became apparent that bullets had become scarce in town and parties of scavengers were sent out to find more. A majority of Pricetowns bullet wealth comes from Prescott, a close ally, to the south. The other currency is the "water mark." Each "mark is valued at roughly one hundred bullets, or one gallon of clean water. In Pricetown, there are seven wells which pump and purify water up from aquifers in the region. Watermarks may be exchanged at these wells to obtain that water, and so it is no surprise that these simple scrips of paper became a good medium for trade.
Slavery is uncommon, accepted, but also contested in Pricetown. A majority of these slaves are "debt" slaves. When a person accumulates enough unpaid debt, usually by in one of Pricetowns casinos, they are found and fitted with a specially made collar. They then work off their debt by working for no pay, or pay that is directed towards their "owners." Another kind of slave is the "raid" slave. Such slaves are people unfortunate enough to be found by slavers or less scrupulous wanderers/travelers and collared. A "raid" slave is more valuable than a "debt" slave in that there is no limit on their usability. They have no financial responsibility to pay off and they are not covered by "debt slave" protection laws. Another difference is, A "debt" slave may be traded or sold for pennies on the dollar so long as they still have at least half of their obligation to fulfill, in which case the slave is still free at the end of their obligation. "Raid" slaves on the other hand tend to be vary wildly in price. A pittance for old or sick slaves, a fortune for young slaves, a kings ransom for slaves both youthful and unique. In Pricetown, a group known as "the misling delegation" operates to keep mislings out of "Raid" slavery, and to abolish slavery as a whole.
-
2. King's Court
A mere month later, Catnip found herself once again in the "Dungeon" of King's Court. The reason for her confinement had been her violent refusal to pleasure King's head of security. Again. In the last month since her appearance in the desert north of the Texas-Mexico border, she had been tricked, collared, enslaved, sold, and finally ended up here in the ever popular entertainment venue "King's Court." The King, the Court's owner, was a tall gaunt man with salt and pepper hair and an sour disposition. He had purchased Catnip for what her captor had thought a pittance, but what King himself believed to be far too much. Despite her unique appearance, he considered his acquisition "worthless goods." If the numerous scars hidden beneath her fur were not enough, Catnip had no skills in any of the areas of general housekeeping King preferred his slaves to have, and no skill whatever in the act of lovemaking, which she refused to do even for him. The only skill she seemed to have, was those of fabrication and mechanics. These skills he allowed her to excersize in order to bring in what little money such professions could bring in a city that required no mechanics and contained an overabundance of manufacturers. Overbearing and sometimes cruel he may have been, rich in the extreme to boot, but King was not a stupid man. Until his newest slave gave in and joined the brothel harem, she would earn her food in the only way she knew.
The head of security, a repugnant little man with heavy handed ways and who always kept his brown hair closely shaved, had taken a liking to the rat mechanic right away though. It had been him to suggest to King that it would be a good idea to obtain her. Catnip's brownish fur, angular muzzle, pointed ears, and jaunty kinks to her tail caught and held the head of securities attention. He imagined what it would be like, as he had with all the other girls he had convinced King to buy, to have that strange Misling's legs wrapped around his head. For three days he had gone to the slave yard and for four he hinted and hectored at King until he saw things his way. It hadn't been hard, the two had been friends since before the cataclysm. Doug Braison, that was his name, got what he wanted from King, but had not counted on the wild resistance he would come against later that night when he attempted to use Kings newest "piece of ass." She bit and scratched, actually drawing blood and keeping Braison beyond arms reach until he ordered her thrown in the "dungeon" out of frustration.
-
In this, her first month in King's Court, Catnip had been sent to the "dungeon" seven times and had spent twice that number in days in the dark of that basement room. Shortly a security officer, likely a failed applicant for the shattered helm, would come and collect her and bring her to either the main room or to her own small room. Likely, it would be the main room and she hoped it would be. The buildings layout was familiar to her, and why not? King's Court had been a refugee center once. It had some key differences, namely a second floor added after the fact accessed via a wooden grand staircase in the foyer. In the main room, Catnip would be released to sit and mingle with the other men and women, boys and girls, of King's harem. In her usual way, Catnip had endeared herself to those around her, and they to her. Particularly, she had made a friend in King's favorite girl, Pinky. Pinky, like Catnip, was considered a unique Misling for obvious reasons. Pinky, was an albino. Abnormally tall for a Misling, and bearing the white fur, red eyes, and full sexy figure that had captured King's attention. In a past life, or so she said, Pinky had been the head mistress of a Reno whore house. "It had been a good life," She told Catnip, "Until the pigs shut me down and turned me out on the street darling."
-
It was from her budding friendship with Pinky (Priscilla Arnez once upon a time) and the other friendly people among those in King's Court that Catnip learned about the city just beyond the confining walls of the refugee center gone luxary house, the business itself, and the man who owned it.
King's real name was Thomas Cheng, though no one was dumb enough to call him that to his face. King was proud of his self made moniker, proud enough to beat into a pulp anyone stupid enough to fail using it. Man or woman didn't really matter much to him, so long as they showed the proper respect. One of those respects was to use his new name when referring to him. Before the Cataclysm, King owned and operated his own bar in Pricetown. Not that he would ever admit to owning the failing place. "That was another man's bar." He'd say when asked. He would say this with a hard grin that suggested the current line of questioning was one that was best avoided if one wished to preserve their health. It usually brought up another line of questioning though, and that one was one he relished to a degree. The fact that, yes, the King had lived in Pricetown not just before the proverbial shit hit the fan, but all his life as well.
Back then, he'd been Thomas Cheng. Inheritor of his father's failing bar. Pricetown was a nowhere place before the base had been built, and was still a nowhere place after. It didn't matter that the shitsplat backwater was home to a military installation. That fact didn't matter when the fine men and women in fatigues preferred to spend their leave and their hard earned dollars at Sandoval's, the bar up the street. When the Cataclysm came, and the competition had been killed off by things that looked like gooey sandstone and screamed like dying women, Cheng believed business would get better. He was wrong of course. New people brought new business and Cheng's customer base spiked for a couple months before plummeting again. The real upturn for Cheng, was the burning of Pricetown. Despite losing the bar in the conflagration, Cheng had come striding from the smoke and ashes a rich man. In the confusion of those first months, he claimed the refugee center as his domain, "hired" a staff of desperate men and mislings, changed his name, and opened up King's Court to the public. He hired free men and women at first, but later started keeping the so much easier to exploit slaves to wait the tables, clean the floors, and ride or be ridden by King's more "lonely" clients. Business had never been better.
-
Time in the dungeon gave Catnip time to think on all these things and more. She supposed that was what the dungeon, one of many dark storage rooms in the basement of King's Court, was all about. Sitting in the dark and thinking about what you did wrong. As far as Catnip was concerned, she didn't do anything wrong. At least Mr. Swingin-dick-security-shit as her other new friend Minx called him, hadn't come down to try and take what he wanted while she couldn't run. She supposed he could use the controller for her collar though, but Minx said that King wouldn't allow that. "He doesn't like rape." The usually boisterous, talkative girl told her. The way she said it suggested some kind of sick joke, but if it was a joke, Catnip didn't get it.
Today, she stared at what she was doing in the grey scale of her night vision. The contraption was her attempt at being useful without having to do something she didn't want to. She was constructing it from the CBMs in the boxes discovered in the dungeon. A collection of cardboard cartons labeled "faulty" and "return to Reno." Catnip's face had felt hot and she was taken by the secret shame of a child finding a much revered relatives collection of dirty magazines when she first looked at the pictures on the packages, and leafed through the manuals. It seemed wrong to be looking at stuff like that when you had a steady girlfriend. She just couldn't shake the idea that she was somehow being mean to Kathrine by looking at them. That thought had faded quickly though, almost as soon as she saw what lay inside. Not dirty "toys," but parts. Her mechanics mind saw them as little packages of bits and bobs. Parts ready to be dismantled and arranged into new, more useful shapes. On these she worked with improvised tools and hummed a little nothing song. Before long though, there came a knock from the guard outside. Friendlier that most of the others. Short and sharp and she knew what it meant.
Her jailers we're coming.
-
Catnip took her project and hid it in one of the cartons along with the stripped down parts and her improvised tools, and waited. She could finish it but in her secret mind, that place where all truth hides from our waking minds, she knew nothing she made would save her from the fate that lay ahead if she stayed in this place. In her head, Catnip went over the plan. The guards would come in, single file, and then line up. Chief Braison would come in last and he would have her remote. The plan was nothing if she couldn't get that little device. She'd take the remote by force as quickly as possible, hit them hard and fast and then flee. It's what she was made for. The sound of the keys in the door seemed to jingle and click at the lock for ages before one loud click, and the door swung open on stiff hinges.
The first part of her plan went off without much of a hitch. Once the detail sent to take her back to the main room was in the room, she hit King's chief of security in a rush that bowled him over. A difficult feat considering his weight and low center of gravity, compounded by his trying to grab her tail. The guards shouted at her, called her names, tried to seize her, but when Braison reached for the controller to her collar he came up with nothing. It was the second part of the plan that went sideways. By means of a simple mistake, perhaps brought on by panic, Catnip went left instead of right. Instead of hitting the stairs and fleeing through King's Court and into the streets beyond, she found herself diving into the deep dark of Pricetowns underground.
-
She ran through the tunnels beneath Kings court, familiar with the layout because of all her time spent in the center back home. The two buildings were built to government specification, and were mostly the same. The door she was looking for wasn't the same though. Instead of a simple light steel door, what she found and hardly noticed even as she hit it, was that it was a heavier kind of portal covered in warning signs. She hit it hard enough to joggle her brains and there came a sharp snap from somewhere in the frame as the old, poorly made lock gave way at her rush.
Where the sewer access was back home, she was shocked to find only a brick wall. Panic did not so much creep into her, as much as it leapt on her like an over eager lover. Her pursuers were somewhere behind her and Catnip had no time to panic. Panic was counter productive. First thing was first, close the door. Maybe if it was shut, they'd assume she'd gone through a different one. With that done, and the door held shut with a pipe (it didn't occur to her to use it as a weapon) she looked to the bricked up passage with an eye used to construction and fabrication. The bricks were just bricks, pre-cataclysm stuff. The mortar on the other hand... It was grainy, weak. Too much filler and not enough of the stuff that made mortar bind. A simple push wasn't quiet enough for her purposes so she took up the pipe. After checking the hallway to see if anyone was coming, she gave the bricks four hard strikes, resounding through the halls like the tolling of an ugly and poorly made bell. The first blow only cracked mortar while the rest pushed aside and finally broke through. The hole thus opened was small, too small for a normal human. Catnip though was not normal. She stuck her head in and when her whiskers didn't encounter an obstacle, she pushed herself all the way through. First the arms, then the ribs. The feeling of her ribs compressing to fit through such a small space was unpleasant, but not painful. They were designed for just this purpose. There was a frightening moment when, like her sister, her hips caught on the edges of the hole. Her ribs could temporarily collapse like those of a normal rat, but her hips would do no such thing. She twisted and turned, trying to find any angle she could.
What finally turned the trick, was the feeling of someone grabbing her tail. Catnip screamed and kicked out, striking someone in the gut with both feet before planting them and pushing with all her might. As she painfully pushed through, she felt someone stomp weakly on the middle of her tail. She screamed again, more in pain that fear, and grabbed for her tail to pull it through. Her foot slipped through someones grip and then, she was out of their reach and into the deeper dark beneath Pricetown.
-
Elsewhere, above and in front of King's Court, Catnip's new friend Minx was performing her weekly meeting with cousin. She did this, meeting out front with the soothsayer, because King wouldn't be seen doing it himself. Secretly, he put great stock in the "horoscopes" cousin gave out in exchange for scraps, peyote, or "smash." It wasn't that cousin was as mad as a shit house rat. It also wasn't that things like horoscopes, fortune telling, and other such nonsense was for old women and fools. It wasn't even that cousin wasn't exactly human, in fact being as far as one can get from human. Cousin was after all, a coyote. It was that King could not risk seeing cousin in person for all those reasons and more, and king wasn't the only one. Minx was only one of the many proxies in town who brought offerings to the animal on behalf of their well to do employers.
"Whatsa doin today cousin?" Minx said in her slight rez accent. She willed the bionic in her face shift her features. Altering them until she took on the most pleasing visage to the old scavenger; that of a female coyote, and a right pretty one at that if cousin was to be believed. As her face settled, cousin emerged from his little tent panting at the late summer heat. The bionic was a rarity, and one that made her one of King's most popular girls.
"Minxy is here!" He said, then asked, "Minxy comes to smash with cousin?"
Minx smirked at that. She would no more lay with cousin than she would with a regular dog. Cousin knew it too, but asked anyway. Cousin thought himself a real charmer. "No cousin sei, I'm here for you know who. Maybe if what you tell me is favourable, he will let you sneak into the kennels again."
He gave her a knowing dog grin and said "Minxy always say no, but cousin knows. Cousin sees it in the moon and stars. What do you being for cousin? Water from rocks? Soda from fountains?" It was the start, and Minx was familiar with this part. He was beginning "the babble." The inane chatter before his mind could reach into that place where his horoscopes were kept. As always, Minx sat cross-legged before him and allowed her mind to wander in the direction of the events that led her to this.
-
"The father of Ravens! Father of lies!" Cousin spouted happily. Minx paid it no mind, he hadn't spoken the one line that meant his mind had cleared yet. Some people believed that cousins babble was a result of his somewhat broken thought processes. Minx, who was a bit closer to the truth, believed that cousin was simply sorting through other people's horoscopes.
She was busy thinking. Thinking about that bastard William D Wannamaker who'd made her the way she was now. A state she wasn't sure if she should thank him for, or kick his balls into his throat for. Her boyfriend back when the cataclysm was still a new thing had loved the weirder stuff in life. While out on one of what he called a "trip trip," he'd wandered into some lab and come back to the little concrete shelter they had holed themselves up in with an armload of glass vials and a needle. The stuff had looked dangerous, but he'd insisted on having her try it out.
"It'll make you beautiful babe!" He told her. Well, it had. At first. The first three had in fact. Each shot more painful than the last, but Minx had once heard that being pretty was painful. Those first three shots had turned her into a bombshell though, and like some bombs, she had also become lightly radioactive. To remove it, Willy suggested they try one of the vials marked "purifier," and that fourth shot knocked Minx out cold.
As she lay passed out on the floor of the evac shelter, William had decided to do a little experimenting of his own, though not on himself. He injected her unconscious form with needle after needle of liquid animalia, then tried to fix it with three straight doses of purifier. In the morning, he was gone. The only evidence of his existence was the empty baggy he'd kept the last of his LSD in and an illegible note. She woke that morning, hideous as sin from the shoulders up, radioactive, and possessing the ability to change the color of her skin at will.
The short of it after that was that she was thrown out of a lot of places as she traveled. Even the Cor thought she was just too horrible to behold. In the end, she wound up in pricetown on the operating table of a misling cyberneticist. He'd given her his experimental facial distortion CBM to test, and in exchange all she had to do was become his wife's debt slave. She agreed at once. Later, he'd come to her at night. He loved his wife and she him, but that woman just couldn't do what he wanted of her anymore. The first face Minx ever took, was that of her mistress.
He gave her a place to stay and any face she wanted, she gave him a year of faithful service both in and out of bed, and the doctors wife gave him and herself about four hundred CC's of nihil at the end of a needle when she found out. Then, just like that, Minx's contract was the cities property and she was up on the block where King found her.
She was just thinking about that doctor, the cyberneticist who's death had been in the papers for a month after the fact and who had instilled in her a bit of a thing for men of science, when cousin snapped her back to the here and now with a single line.
"I see a field of roses in bloom."
-
"Lady of the thousand and one faces, You will make two decisions, one good and one bad. Watch for the plague rat. Daughter of none, sister to hunger. You will soon meet a dark lady. The dark lady wishes for the hand of the king. Watch for the coming of Samhain. Now is a time for friendship for there will be fire and smokes and songs from the whirlwind! The plague rat will defy a machine of her own making, and be remade, then she will make a great journey and there will be greenness and friendship forever more!"
Cousin yammered on and panted, his fortune told. When he'd settled in, Minx said, "You old fool, what about King? What did any of that have to do with King? Cousin, I came for Kings horoscope!"
Cousin shook his mug. "Cousin told minxy's horoscope instead." He said.
Minx was livid. "And why the hell did you do that? I don't believe in any of this, so why did you give me mine when I didn't want it?" She said, almost shouting at the scrawny creature. He was shaking his head again, well aware that "smash" was now out of the question.
"King has no horoscope." He stated. The finality of his statement put Minx off. She flung the scraps of kitchen left overs at his feet and the way she did it told cousin that peyote was also out of the cards, even though he believed he had delivered a favorable reading.
Minx allowed the facade to slip away, letting her CBM return to neutral. Cousin was disappointed to see her do this. The blank featureless slate was so much less appealing than many of her others. Leagues better than her natural face though. Cousin had not seen that one, and he was thankful for that. He liked minx, adored her in fact, but the sight of her true face would run him rabid, mad, or both and he knew this with the sense given by his strange empathy.
He watched her storm off, aware that she was now trying to formulate a new horoscope on the fly based on bits of what he's given her. He didn't mind. She didn't exactly believe in his visions either, but that was not his concern either. So long as what he said was relayed to the one who it was meant for.
-
"Alabaster saint." Catnip thought. She didn't know what alabaster was, nor did she know the source of the thought. Pricetowns underground had turned out to be a more disturbingly familiar setting than she expected. Not sewers, but a lab. In her life, Catnip had been in two labs. That of the insane AI, C.I.D., and that of her birth. Both had been unpleasant experiences. The lab she found herself in now smelled faintly of smoke, the smells of a place which had been put to the torch long ago. If Catnip had encountered robots, she would have lost her nerve and gone back, but she encountered nothing more than a trio of turrets that beeped and clicked weakly at her.
At some point as she wandered, looking for a back entrance of some kind, she realized she was being drawn on into the greyscale darkness. She wasn't sure she could find her way back if she had to. The air down here was thick and stale. When she grew thirsty, she discovered that most of the water in the lab had either dried up or was foul beyond even her ability to tolerate.
The darkness thrummed around her, oddly oppressive and hostile. The world felt thin somehow, and yet she moved on until she encountered a lit room. What had brought her to the room was a high whistling noise. The sound, she discovered, was emanating from a tiny model of the kind of tower her friend Dee had once placed a device he called a "repeater" on, except that this framework tower was topped with a series of little spinning dishes like tiny bowls. The sound those little bowls made as they spun was pleasant, but she felt an urge to stop it. "Why though?" she thought. The urge was like the words that had come into her mind before, not her own. Catnip was dimly aware that for some time, she had begun to have trouble seeing. Some kind of dust had filled the air the deeper in she had gone, obstructing her vision. In the deep part of her mind, far back, she could feel the alarm bells of instinct suddenly spring to life in an attempt to get her to turn and run. Instead, she shrugged off that warning and made what she believed was a terrible decision. She stopped the tower.
The stillness of the air told her nothing, but as soon as the pleasant song of the tower-
"voice of the wind"
-had stopped, something at the far end of the lab had begun to move and her sight became obstructed. The alarm bells rang louder than ever. There were eyes in the fog, something that glistened and stared lifelessly. In her head, she heard the voice.
"Did Richie send you? Have you come to collect Rita for him? Have you come to collect his bride?"
-
"What?"
The grey fog pressed in, and the voice of memory spoke out. "I'm sorry Catnip!" Someone was shouting, "It's for your own good!" Her name was L, and she was force feeding her something white and powdery after she'd been dusted with...
"It's a strange misling." whispered the voice, "Richie would never send their kind. Richie says he doesn't like them. Shush you, shush." The grey fog grew so thick that Catnip now only had the dim impression of the glint she'd caught before, and of something thin and emaciated stalking just beyond her sight.
"Who-"
"Shush you, shush, and listen." It told Catnip, not that she could have resisted. Something like incorporeal fingers was working it's way into her head, pushing her buttons and telling her what to do. Making her do what she didn't want to do. "Pricetown burns little misling, Pricetown burns and I wait. Wait for my love, wait for my Richie. He said he loved me, he told me to wait here, he told me..."
"We need money." Is what he told her. Rita Ortiz has been told by her lover, that he has a plan to escape Pricetown together but that they will need money for travel. Rita is a naive girl, and spoiled to a fault, but her father is outstandingly rich. Was outstandingly rich. He has fallen to the mycus, leaving the water barons fortune unguarded. Rita is infected already, but her love has a plan for that as well. "We can get medicine." He told her, but she must get the money first. She must get it and then wait for him in a certain laboratory in the lab beneath Pricetown. She will be safe there. The singing of the little tower in the room is unpleasant, but she can't really bring herself to approach it. It is a model of the howling tower outside town. The large one above hasn't run since the cataclysm, not since the power source was stolen. Rita doesn't know why they don't just replace it, if it can keep Pricetown safe from the mycus.
She is still waiting, late into the night, when she falls asleep. For a time, Rita dozes and walks in simple dreams in which she sits at the banquet table of her fathers stately house, and all she can smell is mold and blood and smoke while the food tastes of not but rot and decay. It is a dream she does not wake from until the mycus has consumed everything of her. The fungal growth has found it's way through her, dusting every inch of her in spores and mycelia, and bursting rudely from the wound between her breasts. It was not the mycus that did this. She is awake, but not alive. Her fortune is gone. What blade was it that did her to her grave? Rita knows not, but she will wait. She has no choice anyway. The model tower is too abhorrent to approach, and it is between her and her egress. If she does leave, the searing spear will find her and burn her, and she cannot have that until she and her love have escaped. There is medicine, there are ways. She is awake, if not alive, and she will see him again. So, she waits. The years roll by, and she waits. Then...
"Then you came." The voice of Rita speaks into Catnips mind. Catnip can feel the grip on her will weakening, something about the story is drawing the creatures attention away from her, or maybe it's intentional. In a moment, Catnip will be free and she will run. She will gird her will against further intrusion and she will run for all she's worth. She's pretty sure she knows the way back. "But ah, I am starving." Rita says suddenly, and Catnip gets the impression of that hunger. The monster approaches close, materializing fully out of the fog and showing not just an emaciated body, but something that looks as though it has lain out under the sun for an age, it's gender lost to time and mummification. Skin stretched over bone, fungal growth blooming across it's skin and filling it out in some places. Despite it's appearance, there was something powerful about it. It hurt her eyes to look at. If Catnip was going to escape, it had to be now.
One hand fell on Catnips shoulder and with a shriek of primal fear, she tore herself away and fled. In her head, the fingers leapt forward. Rita's will tried to assert itself over her, and failed. Catnip locked down, stopped thinking, allowed her mind to blank. She imagined the mass of pinkish grey in her skull suddenly petrifying, becoming solid and impenetrable. It was on this, that Rita lost her hold entirely.
-
King sat as he usually did at the head of a large and expensive mahogany table recovered from an antique store in Phoenix. The endeavor had cost King a pretty penny, but the people he hired we're professionals at this late date of the cataclysm. They'd brought it back along with a box truck load of guns, ammo, medical supplies, and enough high tension crank to keep Pricetown's junky population going for the next hundred years. At the other end of the table, sat Minx.
"A dark lady come Samhain." King mused, pronouncing Samhain phonetically. Minx had delivered the word the way cousin had said it, "sah-wen," but King was the kind of man who believed words should be pronounced as they are spelled. "What do you think Minx? I haven't seen a person darker than yourself in years, personally." As Minx had predicted, King was taking the horoscope literally. He was, also as predicted, latching on to a single aspect. The one that mattered to him. Acquisition. Or so he probably believed.
"Or you could just like, be destined to meet her or-" she began.
"Hush now, the men are thinking." King said with a sharp raising of his index finger. "A dark lady, and just in time for Halloween. Just in time for the fall cotillion."
Minx didn't let her discomfort show. The exhibition politely known as the "fall cotillion" was no more a cotillion than the unfortunate people on display were debutantes. More rudely (and correctly) known as the "slavers ball," the fall cotillion was a chance to display the very best the cities slavers had to offer. Men and women like King would put on parties where the great and good were invited to come and have a good time, celebrating the closing of the year. The cities debt offices put their share of indentured slaves out to be interviewed. Minx enjoyed the other more innocent activities, but the cotillion could be grueling for some. She was glad she was under Kings roof. At least he had a good party and wouldn't put the "staff" under too harsh a hand during the festivities. It was an important occasion for people in Kings position though. More than displaying and buying, it was a chance to cement ones place in the Pricetown hierarchy. King had been the most influential for several years, and he wasn't about to let that go.
Minx reclined a little. He was working through it, making the horoscope work for him, when there came a heavy knock at the double doors of Kings private room.
"Sir, uh, King. We have an issue."
-
Catnip lay on the floor of the centers large decontamination room, covered in a blanket of white powder that worked it's way into her fur and tingled lightly on her skin. The guards had been waiting for her at the place where the brick wall had been, having knocked the obstruction open in order to pursue. She'd returned before they had a chance to muster their courage (and retrieve any weapons) and before she knew it, they'd clonked her on the head and hauled her here. When she came to, they made her take a double dose of some bitter pill and covered her in the powder.
"She was covered in it sir," Said Braison to King, "Never seen someone so thoroughly coated in-"
"How far did she get? Have the men that collared her been treated, and where the hell is her remote?" Kind snapped, "This is a lot of trouble Braison, I hope she's worth it."
"Pretty deep, but not any deeper than the sub surface floor I think, they have been, and uh... lost."
"Lost?" King glared at him, withering the short man.
"Lost. She uh... Took it from one of the guards, but she doesn't have it now!" He added quickly. Somewhere in the depths, Catnip had lost the controller for her collar. It made punishing her without harming her difficult, but she would later come to regret losing it.
King peered in through the porthole that was one of three of the decontamination chambers windows at the pile of rat and antifungal powder, deep in thought.
"King?"
"Shave her and powder her down again, I've got some plans for the end of october I'd like your input on, but first I want you to make sure this bitch isn't infested with anything. Don't give me that look either, I don't give a shit. Even if it was her only redeeming quality, I'd still tell you to shave her."
He took one last look through the port hole and shook his head. "Damned if I know why I wasted the marks."
-
A few days later, Catnip awoke as she usually did. She rose blearily from her sparse bed, walked blearily to the single mirror and rough basin in her room, glared blearily at the hairless mess in the mirror before brushing her teeth and making her bleary way to the kitchen for toast and coffee. She avoided the main floor. She always avoided the main floor, but now she did so with an added level of care. She didn't want anyone seeing her in her hairless condition, pink scarred skin unmasked by a very thorough shaving.
For the girls who'd performed the act of barbery and the guards who'd overseen the operation, the experience had been rather intriguing. Every inch of fur that joined the ever growing pile revealed more and more of the plasma burned ruin that lay beneath. Catnip told them haltingly of how she had come by such terrible burns, and how it had led to her current appearance. The creature had been called "Apophis" and the main cause of her appearance, was greed. She told them how she could have made a clean get away, but had instead opted to loot the monsters domain while the beast had been close at hand. How it and it's retinue had burned her with green fire and set her muscles jumping with arcs of lightning. It was only the grace of luck and a special "blanket" that she managed to escape.
The girls had listened with an obvious awe that served to restore a bit of Catnip ego while the guards had hid their interest a bit better. Although, not much better. They asked her many questions after that, talking at length about there lives before and after the cataclysm and their hobbies. A topic which confused and interested all in the room greatly when it came to Catnip turn to speak. The talking was good, it eased her. When the topic came to boys, Catnip let slip that she had no boyfriend.
"But ai have a girlfriend." She told them before talking at length about Kathrine. It became clear very quickly that this Kathrine was a bit more than just a friend, and to the guards, it explained a lot.
"A dike." One of them would later tell King and Braison.
"Either lesbian or bi." The other corrected. "She may not be willing in the sack sir, but she's a damn good conversationist. Had the girls trimming her hair eating up every word."
King mulled it over. Talented mechanic, or so she claimed, and a pleasant talker, or so his security staff said.
"What do you think pinky?" He asked his favorite madame. The albino misling didn't have to mull things over so much. It was because of her input, that Catnip was given her own collection of basic tools and allowed an allowance of scraps to work with.
-
Catnip worked diligently and methodically, understanding on some level that what she was now doing was a form of prayer. Or at least, she hoped it was. She had never received any response as a result of what she was now doing but she felt that it must please her strange god somehow. As of late though, she wasn't particularly pleased with that one herself. It had taken her away. Taken her away from everything she loved and dropped her in this dry, unlovely, hot, and unpleasant place where the people didn't seem to care much for anything but themselves. Sort of. She assumed it had been her gods will anyway. She knew that whatever had happened had been the doing of the man in the blue robes. "Where is he now?" She asked herself aloud, not expecting an answer and unaware that the bishop who'd brought her here was no more than shredded blue fabric scattered across the desert floor now.
"Where's who now?" Said Minx from the door, startling Catnip into bumping her little improvised altar and scattering the parts to and fro. Catnip didn't answer, she only gathered her parts up and began what she'd been doing again. Minx crossed the room circuitously, taking a long look at the poster given to Catnip by one of the girls who'd had a hand in shaving the rat girl. It was a classic poster. One everybody but Catnip had seen hundreds of times. The image depicted was of a cat hanging from a branch and under that was the legend "Hang in there!"
Minx snorted then turned back to Catnip. The rats bald head was cringe worthy to look at. They'd even shaved her long ears and it had made them look like the chew toys sometimes brought as offerings to cousin. She couldn't fault the girls work though, they had snipped every little hair and hadn't cut Catnip once.
"What are you doing?" She asked, looking at the thing Catnip was working on. It looked like a glove or gauntlet of some kind, but made from bits and bobs and what had obviously been pieces of bionic sex toys.
"I'm praying..." Catnip said simply, letting a little irritation slip into her voice. She liked Minx, but wasn't in the mood for the face shifter's conversation at the moment.
"Over what? That loveglove?"
Catnip sighed and put her tools down heavily. "What do you want Minx?"
"Just... wanted to see how you were doing. They said you met some Mycus downstairs."
"I guess."
"Want to talk about it?"
"... Sure."
And so, they talked long into the afternoon. Minx shared her story, several of her stories in fact, and Catnip listened. When it was her turn, Catnip talked about home. Home, and the people she thought of as family.
-
After the incident, life around King's Court grew strange by degrees. It started simply. A pitcher girl carrying a large crystal decanter of water and a tray of fine glasses stepped upon a board in the hall not far from King's Chambers. This board, seemingly fresh, had uttered a single dull shriek as it's nails were pulled from it's mooring and toppled the pitcher girl onto her bottom. Her foot slipped through the newly opened hole, and to her horror something like a grey twitching tendril was snaking it's way up her leg. She screamed and kicked out heedless of the barb at the end of the seeking digit. She regained her footing and ran as fast as she could. The board clapped back down and was seemingly pulled back until it was flush with it's brothers around it. When the pitcher girl, Sarah, returned with not one but two guards in tow, they found no evidence of the offending tendril. She stomped on the board she had been sure had stumbled her. The guards retrieved a bar and pulled up a few of the floor boards, revealing only the empty crawl space beneath. Sarah begged and pleaded, but to know avail. She was brought before King and summarily fired. Much later, she would be glad of it. For now, it was back on the debt slaves block.
The damage was done though, and rumor spread fast among the staff and slaves. King's Court had a problem. Searches turned up nothing though, and within a week people had almost forgotten the incident. Until the dreams started that is.
Dreams in which the dreamer found themselves in a cold room with only a tiny whining object for company. In the dream, they would wait and wait for someone until deciding to try and sleep, waking only when the slender steel of a hunting knife found it's way into their hearts. The name on their lips as they died in the dream had not been of the killer, but of the killed. Rita.
The name bothered King in private, but in public he put on a stern face. After the dreams though, came the sounds. It was reasoned that a lack of sleep was the cause. The scratching and rustling being little more than a hallucination. This was the accepted reason right up until people started coming down with mycus infections.
A pall fell over King's Court, and the staff saw King less and less as he secluded himself to his room. Orders were issued, anti-fungus was passed out again and again. The one thing that was not done, was to cancel the King's Court portion of the fall cotillion.
-
Despite the mood, preparation for the fall cotillion went ahead steadily. Everything had to be absolutely tip top for clients, not to mention slave traders. King became obsessed with the prophecy Minx had given him, seeing the predicted "dark lady" as not just a unique asset to be acquired, but as a vital part of his business. Those closest to him worried for his health and sanity, and the Court's physicians began to worry about the health and sanity of his staff.
The dreams were getting worse, and health was failing en masse. The physicians claimed it was mycus, that the searing spear should be called to investigate. King again refused and mere days before the ball, pinky came down with a case of late stage infestation. The doctors who treated her informed King that she could be saved, but it would take surgery and a lot of anti fungus but she would not be allowed to return to Kings Court. Such an advanced case would cause an atavism, an allergy, and the next time she contracted the mycus would not simply infect her, it would kill her outright.
It was fortunate for Catnip and Minx, that King's new disregard for common sense and safety reared its ugly head on the morning of the fall cotillion.
-
"I need her back here. Not tomorrow. Not today. Yesterday. That fucking quack thinks he can just hold my property like this? Doctor fucking Efram fucking Marsh will regret this shit. It's fucking robbery is what it is." King raved. Catnip and Minx stood before him, listening to the rant for some time before he finally strode purposefully to his safe and took from it a hefty book of water marks.
"A fucking ransom is what it is, and on the most important day of the year. Pay that fucking dink and get Pinky's whore ass back here, double time! My fucking business and-" the two girls took their leave of king without being dismissed. Minx knew that when king really got rolling, he would hold you for hours. He seemed to understand that himself and usually didn't come down to hard on slaves or servants who broke away before he'd had his fill.
It was the first time Catnip had been out on the streets of Pricetown since she had first entered King's Court. As she had thought before, the streets seemed almost uncomfortably packed. She mused on a lesson Quinn and Dervish had tried to impress upon her and her sister, and that was that disease spread fast when people came in close contact with one another. It was why the refugee center always seemed to have more sick people than the farm. Catnip took in the lesson better than her sister of course. Mica had no time for such lessons between goofing off and eating viscera.
They moved between the crush, bypassing a large swell of people on one occasion by taking a detour over one of the towns all to common scrap and Adobe buildings and through the burnt out remains of one of the towns old bars until they found themselves at a building with a simple sign above it's plank walkway.
"Marsh clinic."
"Mislings treated here."
King paced his private room. The small circuit he walked was clear on the floor by how clean that path was, and how the rug had begun to wear down under his repeated passage. The chief of security could feel both tension and sickness baking off his friend and employer. "I dream of her." King said. He was afraid of her, Doug could see it in the way he jumped at the slightest thing, or in the sharp glances King shot at the mirror behind the headboard of his grand bed. King was terrified, and it wasn't Pinky's absence from the ball that had him on edge. It was "her."
King had not told anyone his own monstrous tale. About how he had awoken one night from a dream in which he had relived the great burning to find "her" emerging from the mirror above, to find her reaching down to him. A monstrous thing like a desiccated corpse with it's hand and tendrils hanging down and reaching for him like the branches of dead trees in an abyssal swamp. He had fled screaming across his chambers to stumble over a stool and strike his nose hard enough against the door to start it bleeding. "She" had not followed, and from then on he had kept Pinky with him. He believed the albino mislings presence staved "her" off. King was certain he knew who "she" had been once, and "She" had after all held Pinky's kind in utter disdain even before he'd done what he'd done. Pinky wasn't here now though. King simply wondered how long it would be before "she" made her appearance.
-
"But doc."
"No buts, I'm holding both of you. I cannot imagine what the hell has gotten into King's mind to risk everyone in his establishment like this. Hasn't the fool called on the searing spear to investigate?" Asked Efram Marsh, a Misling doctor of some standing. Like most of his kind he was tall, grey furred, and clearly a victim of some vast blanket mutation experiment. Unlike most of his kind, Efram Marsh had been gainfully employed at the time of his forced mutation. In fact, Marsh had been in charge of it. A hiccup, a simple disaster really, was all it took for the computer AI running the lab where the Mislings had started life to begin using more than just the standard stock of homeless people or convicts. The computer began taking in staff as well, and sending out robots to abduct survivors. In the two years after his change, Doctor Marsh had time to reflect and repent. Now, serving a greater good as a general doctor he found himself stuck with a hard choice. Turn these two away and call the searing spear to bring hellfire on the house of the King, or take them in and treat them. Of course, the second choice also included the bit about hellfire. King had been told that any exposure to Mycus at this time would kill his best girl, but lo and behold the fool had sent two infected girls to collect her. Well, no sir. That would not stand.
"I am holding both of you for treatment and quarantine." He repeated. Minx slapped the book of watermarks against her palm in irritation, but it wasn't irritation with Efram. It was irritation with her master. King knew sending them out would end this way, but he'd sent them out anyway. She supposed she was glad though, as was Catnip. King's Court had become a dark place. The halls lay empty as most of the staff secluded themselves to their rooms, hardly anyone taking on clients or even moving about. In some places, it almost seemed like a ghost house. Catnip took the pills offered her and nudged Minx to do the same.
"An shaving a Misling! How humiliating. I am truly sorry dear, you can be sure the delegation will hear about this!" Efram went on indignantly. Minx shuddered a little, suddenly filled with the strangest feeling that perhaps the delegation was now the least of King's worries.
-
The feeling in Kings Court deepened to something resembling terror. It was a thing with teeth that gnawed and worried at the staff from it's place hidden beneath a gray veil on the spore dusted table of the mind. By noon, King's Guests had begun to arrive. Pricetown's resident great and good from every house. To them, the staff was cordial and "friendly." Underneath, many of them knew something was going to happen, they didn't know what, but they knew. By evening, that feeling had passed on to the guests as well in due part to the fact that the host had yet to show himself.
The mood shifted to one of gray restlessness on the part of the guests, and rumors began to circulate. Where was King, the host? Where was his white mistress, the albino Pinky? Where was she of a thousand faces, Minx? And where was this "Dark Lady" their host had carefully spread rumors about? But more, who was this "Gray Queen" the staff had begun to whisper through sluggish lips.
Outside, night began to fall and yet still there was no show from King. Cousin, the ragged coyote sooth Sayer shied away from King's Court with an animalistic static of fear prickling up his spine. He yipped at the moon, and to the ears of the approaching men of the searing spear, his cries were an omen of doom. The doctor had called in the spear to check King's Court, and these specialists, these angels of burning mercy, had already treated many minor cases in the area around the court. As night fell, they moved in on the center of the bright that had begun to fall once again on Pricetown.
No one knew what happened that night, save for the escaping searing spear, but everyone for miles around saw the fire. In the morning, the people of Pricetown awoke to find the streets filled with billowing smoke, and King's Court a smoldering ruin. Damon Craig, the demon of searing spear, told a blood curdling tale of ambush and of nobility slain. Of burning and of monstrosities emerging from the dying bodies of King's infected staff. The story of that nights work would be told and retold in the coming year, and later remembered as the mycus terror began to over take Pricetown the following summer.
The men of the searing spear entered through the front doors into a main hall in which was taking place a veritable orgy. The leader of the searing spear, a man know for his fiery zeal in pursuit of the fungal menace and who stood tall and slender, announced aloud "Ladies and gentleman, I would ask that you remain calm and cooperative. The searing spear has reason to believe the premises has come under infestation by the gray scourge."
Damon's eyes drifted as he spoke, taking in the crowd of faces and thinking "infested, all of them are infested." His gaze came to a rest on another newcomer. As they had entered, so to had another. She was terrible and beautiful to behold all at once. Pale ivory skin smooth and rich in it's fullness over a body that all men would want beneath them in a bed of silks, and women would look on with jealous scorn. The woman's eyes seemed a strange blazing rust flaked purple, and her lips showed the bright crimson of freshly spilled blood. It was just below the head of this Gray goddess that her one obvious flaw shown. The wound that had ended her life, blossoming with mycus six years run to riot.
"Hi." Said the apparition humorously, "I'm Rita."
There was silence in the hall. The captain of the searing spear looking up into the eyes of the gray Queen even as she gazed back down into his steely blues. Someone screamed, another person vomited, and many in the room suddenly came down with a splitting ache, like a fire ignited at the center of their brains. Rita's little grin and powerful gaze never shifted, but Damon's did. The staff had begun to convulse while still others attempted to flee. A woman attacked the Noble she had been in the act of servicing, biting him on the throat while still straddling the man. He threw her from him with a shreik of pain and anger, her head struck the floor and split like an over ripe melon spewing grey mush and tendrils. This same woman was not dead though, and she sprang from the floor, her head a ruin, and threw herself at the Noble.
"So fast..." Thought Damon, "how has it spread so fast unless..." His gaze shot back to the woman at the top of the stairs, and he pointed to her. "Get her, she is carrying Marloss. Dont just stand around using your thumbs as fart corks, get her! She's a fungal vampire for fuck sakes!"
Rita laughed and swirled her skirts, and act that revealed her lovely alabaster white legs before the skirt shed a blinding cloud of spores. A thrill went through the room at that, and the men of the searing spear we're all at once beset by the staff of King's Court, now little more than mycus puppets and fungal zombies. They fought there way back, until they reached the doors and three men volunteered to go back in and do what needed to be done. The rest of them would hold the entrance and wait. Damon exerted his mental mutation and combusted a whore from the inside. Fire spat in jets from her infested eyes and mouth and every other oriface making her look like some profane bomb. Gaslight blades cut and cauterized and a flamethrower spit its raging conflagration.
Deeper in, Rita danced. As she did, she released cloud after cloud of infectious spores and relished the feeling of being one mind of many and the sensation of spreading the many in such a way. She took the time to pounce on someone she encountered, one of the searing spear, and straddled the woman like a lover and kissed her. That kiss was one of death of course, Rita's mouth filled with a squirming mass of tendrils. Some as thin as thread and others as thick as fingers, each tipped with a short and sharp bone proboscis. The woman beneath her was drained of both fluids and memories in mere moments. "They are going to incinerate us." She said aloud as she went over the woman's most recent memories. The bomb was taken up, and in her strong hands was little more than a cheap China cup to be smashed into shards. "Going to have to get going I suppose." She giggled a little, tiny puffs of dust being ejected by the little movements this caused in her chest. Rita didn't want to burn yet, not when she had a vengeance half fulfilled. Not when she was still having so much fun. She rose from the dried up husk, the blue bloom in her chest opening like an oddly placed brooch filled with fluid and power, and made her way to a place she knew she could escape the coming infernal holocaust.
-
The interior of King's Court had soon turned a shade of red, running thick with rivulets of gray particulate. Mold and fungus had already begun to sprout and burst from walls and scattered corpses. Forces of the searing spear had withdrawn and spiked the doors. Fire spread within, belching from the windows above as ungodly inhuman screeching mixed with the roar of the flames. The fire reached the kitchen before the bomb that had been placed there went off, sparking the gas that had been left on by the man who'd put his incendiary device there. The walls of King's Court, once a refugee center and incredibly durable, held as the roar of a hellish burning wind swept up the halls and instantly incinerated everything caught in it's wake. The blaze set in King's quarters consumed everything. Furniture turned to charcoal, valuable watermarks and paper relics of the old world became as ash, jewelry and softer metal work melted in the intense heat, and the desiccated body seated in the imperial chair at the far end of King's fine meeting table was cremated along with the rest of his empire of pleasure.
Catnip saw the fire from her window at Efram's clinic, a bright glow against the dark sky. She felt worry, and a bit of sadness for the friends who may not have escaped. In a few days, she would be released. Catnip would go to King's Court, or what was left of it, with Minx and see what there was to see. What there was to see, amounted to very little of course. even several days on, smoke and ash still lingered in the air, and the ruins were still very hot. Every now and then, Catnip would cross a man or woman kicking over piles of coal or ash before turned their flames on the spot revealed. "You can never be too careful." some of them would say.
In Minx's room, they found thing to be somehow relatively in tact, but Minx only wanted one thing. A small pocket mirror containing a picture, unharmed by fire. She explained to Catnip that the photo was of the man who had hidden her face. Catnip nodded, understanding a little but eager to press on to her own room. Catnip's room, unlike Minx's, was almost completely gone. Including the poster she had foolishly hoped had survived. Instead, beneath a pile of charcoal and ash, she found a mechanism and brass attached to a gauntlet. "Agmen," She thought bitterly, "Of course she would protect junk like this." It was hot to the touch, so Catnip wrapped it in a towel she'd brought along. The searing spear checked over their belongings, and the things they'd taken from the ruins, before making them take a dose of antifungus each and seeing them on their way.
In time, the ruins would cool. Long before that though, the city would condemn the building, afraid of what may happen if it was inhabited. The entrance to the lab beneath was cemented up with a veritable mixers worth of liquid stone. Within a month, rumor began about ghosts among the ashes. That was fine with Rita. How she had escaped was her business alone, but once she discovered that the fire barely touched her, it had been a trivial task. Now she sat in the ruins of King's old chambers and planned, confident that no one would come to bother her. She didn't want that. Not yet. She rolled the skull around between her hands, then kissed it upon the skuffion before setting it aside. She needed rest, and food. Food would come first, then rest. Rita looked out the wide window looking out on Pricetowns high street and giggled.
"Look out world, here comes Rita, here comes the gray queen."
-
INTERMISSION
On Mislings
Mislings are an emerging group of peoples subjected to extensive genetic alteration to make them more suitable for manual labor as well as making them reproduce more quickly. In the years since the Mislings escape from their home lab, they have gained an acceptance of what they are and begun forming their own cultural identity as the younger generation grows up in the post cataclysm world.
The average Misling is of regular build, being no taller and no heavier than a normal human. Most bear gray fur and rodent features, with a rare few being examples of the "failed" strains. Mislings are possessed of a slightly higher endurance than a normal human, enabling them to work for longer under normal conditions while their fur and tails provide a little comfort from the cold and heat respectively.
Mislings are somewhat resistant the intoxicating effects of drugs and alcohol (whether this is an effect of their mutation, the general background of the average Misling, or both has yet to be determined) but are prone to illness and infection. They are especially sensitive to fungal infection.
As part of their intended purpose, Mislings are possessed of certain qualities that make them especially effective in procreation. They are genetically stable, the feat of keeping them fertile despite their advanced stage of mutation being a closely guarded secret. Dominant features often lean heavily in favor of their Misling parents, regardless of who the parents are. This was an unintended feature of the maintaining of fertility. Gestation is usually short, about six months, and Misling females often give birth to litters of three to eight, with twins and singletons being exceptionally rare. Normal human women impregnated by a Misling often produce twins and occasionally triplets, but the children are almost always mostly human with some slight rodent features.
From the Memoirs of Dr. Efram Marsh
In the early years of the Cataclysm, I had time to think and reflect on what I'd done. I was the lead of the project that turned these people into what they are now, these "Mislings." At first it was just a simple mutagen project, experiment a little here, a little there. See if anyone wanted to volunteer or experiment on convicts. Then things started to heat up behind the bamboo curtain, and our focus shifted. What we needed was a work force that could work hard and breed quickly. We tried a few simple small things at first, but the results were less than exemplary. Once a person mutates so much, they simply can't "do it." anymore. After the initial stages, that was back in... 2030? Back before the Cataclysm anyway, we decided to try and implement our experiments with the emerging research on animal based mutagen. The results were a little better, but at that point we were running low on volunteers.
Then we struck on an idea. We could get all the convicts we wanted of course, the government was sanctioning that sort of forced volunteering at that point, but we needed more. At the time the USA was going through one of it's regular increases in the homeless situation, and you couldn't walk down the street without seeing a group of vagrants up to something. Our lab, I am ashamed to say, began abducting these unfortunate people. Near the end there, we didn't even bother making sure they were actually homeless or not. We just needed more subjects.
-
The first thing we tried was flies. Flies breed fast and live lives too short to do more than learn a task and perform it. The experiments came up with mixed results, but we thought we could do better. After that, we tried bees and ants. The problem with the flies was that they were too dumb to control, and too short lived to be cost effective. Bees and ants reproduce by the thousands and can perform amazing feats of strength and coordination. Single ant or bee mutants could do the latter, but without some kind of control they were just like people. We tried a few tests with installing a queen of some kind, but some of these ended with the "queen" being ignored or outright destroyed, or with the subjects becoming so mindless they had to be put down. Unfortunately the three "failed" strain Mislings produced by that line of testing were killed by Mycus, a forth has since gone on to found a colony with a queenless hive in Colorado somewhere. I hear she has made a bit of a name for herself raiding settlements in her area.
Had some fascinating results with roaches, but that research was dead ended immediately. Subjects we're often skittish and impossible to put down. While not fertile, the roach strain was the only one that didn't suffer from the mycus infection years later. The lab kept the colony of about 50 subjects around and under observation until the day we were forced to leave. By then about half of em had died off, but the rest all left together. About nine or ten left now, living in a tiny commune deep in the Rockies among the Mycus. Rita leaves them alone, god knows why.
Tried reptiles and birds next. Tried that for a long time actually, but eggs were always unfertilized and male birds never lived long or very comfortably. Bone mass was the issue with birds. They were weak, and inevitably suffered a lot of injuries. Also, their feathers made them clumsy. Tam and Scofield were the best we got, Scofield being at least somewhat capable of breeding, but only with a Misling. Actually, now that I think on it, Tam passed on three years ago, bless her soul. That makes Scofield the last of that strain. Lizards were too dumb and langorous. Unpredictable too. The science team wanted to do something like the tests they had going with that hippy commune down south, but we just couldn't wait for the slow process. We had deadlines. Speeding the process was what made them incapable of more than predatory violence.
We tried a few others after that, throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, but didn't really have much success until we got into rodents. Ferrets and weasels were a mixed bag. Marketing claimed that rats had a bad rep so the stigma would make the project less.popular when we went live with it. Mice we're decided on as sufficiently adorable and viable. The common gray mouse to be exact. Early experiments showed promise, but the fertility problem was never solved until after the cataclysm, after our labs AI went completely spare and took itself from our control.
We didn't notice anything was wrong at first. I suppose that's how all disasters start isn't it? I suppose the first clue should have been when the AI solved the fertility problem for us. It wasn't supposed to be able to do that, but we were too chuffed to care. Outside, the world was on fire and we were too busy patting ourselves on the back to notice. Well, we noticed soon enough. God's above did we take notice.
The first to go was the local population. Specifically the population of the lab. In all, we had around five hundred subjects on hand, all of them what marketing had begun to dub "Mislings" after something from some fantasy book. The overall population of the lab, test subjects and non-essential staff included, was around the two thousand mark. We kind of started to get the feeling that something was wrong when it came over the wire that something had gone wrong out in the great invisible world. People we're coming down with some kind of disease that made them aggressive as hell, weird animals sighted in rural areas, rioting everywhere, our own police force turned on us, and to top it all off, Chin Wei Lin, the prime minister of the PRC had just ordered several megatons of nuclear fire dropped on just about everybody while our own President Kyle Harkness ordered just about the same thing. Some of us decided that if they were going to die, they would rather do it under the open sky or wrapped in the arms of their families. That was when we found out that our AI had instituted a lockdown.
You don't know real horror, real discomfort, or real shame until you've been forced by your own labs AI to sit and watch machines go to work dissecting live children. For a long time I couldn't talk about it to anyone. Not even the lady who would eventually be my wife, a doctor ten years my senior from the refugee center now ten years in her grave. You watch because you have to, and you have to because if you don't the AI is going to get another poor kid and do it again and again and again until you do watch. It wants you to watch because you're the last, you're the administrator and you must be present at all dissections. Protocol demands it. I kept praying every night for either death or transformation. Being turned into one of them would exclude me from the staff roster, and with that would end my "duty" of witnessing the atrocities the AI was perpetrating, and the entire practice itself.
If given the option of facing down the entire host of Ahz't'uhr and God's army, or marching straight into the lair of the gray Queen armed with a spoon and with nothing on but a sock tied around the base of my willy wang with my balls swinging in the breeze, and watching another of those dissections, I'd pick one of the first two. Probably the second, since I think Rita might have trouble with some of the memories she'd drain from my cooling husk.
I kept wondering too what the science team was going through at the hands of the people we once called subjects. As it turned out, nothing. When my time came and the AI deposited me shaken and in agony over my change with the others, I was greeted by an elderly man who gave me a blanket and said simply, "Welcome doc, we all the same here now, no need to hold a grudge against our own." His name was Jonah Hoxley, and he was an alcoholic. I say 'was,' but Jonah was insistent that he still was. "Once an alky, always an alky." He used to say. Jonah was special though, especially to the Mislings. The man was a religious, convinced that the experiments we'd done to him had been the will of God. "The humble mouse," he used to tell us, "can see the world a whole lot different when he ain't got his head in the clouds like everyone else." Later Jonah would travel around Texas speaking the word of the man Jesus, and later still he'd take his traveling pulpit to new england. When he died, I think everyone of us, the Mislings, came from miles around to attend his funeral. In those days in the lab, it was Jonah who gave them a reason to keep on living and fighting. The man who made it clear that there could be forgiveness for me and my staff.
The rest of it is well known history. A kid with the amusing name of Cole Slaugh managed to short out the AI with a logic puzzle. Cole was a good kid, but a bit strange. After the lockdown was lifted and we got out, what followed was a mass exodus to Arizona. Along the way we ran afoul of another lab and helped the Mycus spread. Years later, a rat would come among the mice and show us the way out of the desert. A slow trickle of us would come through the portal that bore us to safety, a lot of these further expeditions with mixed success. Since then, Mislings have spread out quiet a bit, and I've put a lot of effort into Toning down their fertility while helping others solve their opposite problem.
I get ahead of myself though, and there isn't much else to tell about Misling kind that you couldn't learn in the schools that I'm glad to see cropping up in settlements all over the place. I'm an old man and it's a wide world. The memories of the lab still haunt my dreams, but they come less and less now. Before long, they will probably wash out and fade as my mind gives out. They say I've got Alzheimers, but I don't need a doctor to tell me that. I forget you see, and it seems a shame to forget. I'll never forget their eyes though. The eyes of the people I helped make, viewing the outside world, looking out at a new beginning.
-
The Howling Tower
The thing staggered it's way down an alley between a block of squalid apartments, and the bullet merchants facing crack top court. There was, fortunately, none to witness it's passage or it's mad rambling.
"Lovely... Lovely... Rita... Lovely... It's... So dark... So dark... Without... Rita... Mother said... Said... Don't drink... Prescott... Lovely... Rita... I... We... I... Want... Rita... Rita... Rita..."
It moved on, the gray mass of it's body pulsing, corpulant and tumerous with the life it carried. Soon the thing, a babbler by name, Jonathan D'frees once upon a time, came to an oppulant courtyard where it seemed to stop and whisper to itself. The mycus monster gazed with it's half glazed eyes up at the tower no more than a mile away and mumbled on.
"Howling... Singing... Ever... Ringing... Rita... Rita... The tower... The howling... Tower... Stop her... Howling... Drive her... Rita... Jonny... Boy... You... Shouldn't have... Drunk... The water... Rita... Lovely..."
The figure, even less human in appearance than it had been before, settled on a bench in the courtyard. The property was that of a prominent pharmacy which dealt mainly in birth control and cheap but effective fungal medication. The pulsing in the figure quickened and soon it wasn't just throbbing, but growing. Inflating like some cancerous balloon. It let out a how of agony, breaking the babblers incessant litany before exploding in a torrent of gray spores and tendrils. The courtyard was thoroughly painted in the monsters gray ichor, and where the thing had been sitting was now a pair of legs and a single thick stalk of something that seemed to breath and exhuded spores with every exhale. The stalk was topped with a strangely lovely flower like a sunflower, but with blue petals.
In the morning, the searing spear would come and burn out the newly risen patch, hacking off the heads of the "moon" flowers and incinerating what was left.
In the last couple months, the scene was all too common.
-
Not as common as it would have been, had it been warmer. The winter months in northern Arizona ranged from relatively cool during the day, and downright freezing at night. Catnip didn't mind the cold. It kept people off the streets, thus keeping them uncrowded. Catnip learned a dislike of the crowded streets of Pricetown in the warmer months after her first few encounters with the towns vast pick pocket population. Likewise, the people of Pricetown liked the short winter months because it kept the mycus sluggish.
Because of the recent series of suicidal attacks though, Pricetown was warming up and people were getting worried. The searing spear did it's job of keeping back the impending flood, and the shattered helm did it's job of keeping the populace in order. It didn't change the fact though that people were afraid. Something had to be done.
Catnip stepped lightly around an old burnt hulk of a long ago incinerated truck, and both blessed and cursed her fate. The road to her new job, a position for which pinky would be paid a grand sum, was a good half hour walk from Pinky's pleasure palace and gave her time to think.
The week before.
She wasn't going to serve at Pinky's, she was dead set against it, and Pinky was alright with that so long as Catnip understood that she wouldn't be fed or kept around if she didn't make herself useful. Catnip balked, but Pinky simply looked at her.
"You ain't gotta lay with guys, and you ain't gotta do it with gals, but chica you better get it through your head that your still a slave and I can't afford to board a slave who won't work." She said. Pinky had been at that moment going over the palaces ledgers, balancing budgets, and working out the payroll.
"Aw, but Pinky, what am I gonna do? All I know how to do is-"
"None of that whining chica, it doesn't endear you to anyone." Pinky hissed before sliding two sheets of thin paper across her grand desk to the mechanic. "I'm hiring you out, but out of kindness I'm going to let you pick. First, the aeroponics farm is always looking for workers. Good job if you like being poisoned on a daily basis. The other is one I think you might prefer. The council of three is looking for a mechanic to aid in the repair of a certain facility here in Pricetown."
Catnip took the sheets while pinky talked, lighting up a bit at the mention of real mechanic work. The first was a rather boring brochure about the fast paced world of aeroponics and how fresh faces were always welcome to assist in the monumental task of feeding Pricetown.
The other, much simpler sheet was a request for workers for a project "for the safety and salvation of Pricetown." It stated that among other professions, a mechanic was needed. Preferably, a professional with at least five years experience. Also preferable, was that the mechanic had to be a genetically sound human. The last requirement was easily dropped with pinky liberally greasing a few palms here and there, but the first had to be done by Catnip herself. One from scratch electric generator and a motorcycle built from scraps and a lawnmower engine later, she had a job she could be content with.
Catnip waved her card, a simple peice of plastic she had puzzled over for hours after she got it, and was allowed entry into the run down facility where she would be working until it was operational once again. The tower standing over the derilict building was very familiar to her, as she had stopped a similar object from spinning once in the lab beneath Pricetown. More than a little, the tower reminded her that Pricetown's current predicament and the fate of King's Court were almost certainly her fault. For now, she wouldn't let it bother her and she certainly wouldn't tell anyone. Minx had helped her fill out her forms, and when Catnip explained that the closest thing she had to a surname was "blightwalker," Minx had gone pale.
"Better not Nip, people in Pricetown are superstitious." In reality, the name had given Minx a bit of a start. It was very similar to another name that was going around in connection with Rita: plague walker. Cousin had given many similar readings it seemed.
"Ms. Walker?" Came the voice of her foreman across the yard. "Yeah, that's her alright. Walker, you might be here earlier than everybody else, but that don't mean much when everyone including yourself is an hour late. Get your buns in gear and take a seat. Briefing is gonna be down the hall in the red room on the left. Move move, Jin Jin."
-
The auditorium was a relatively warm place compared to the rest of the facility. A room that started out narrow but widened out and descended the closer one got to the stage at the far end. Catnip righted a few chairs and took a seat behind one of the auditorium spanning desks. By then, a few people had begun to filter in. Most of them were Mislings, Catnip saw, and she guessed that these were the laborers. The cleanup crews who would be taking away rubble and replacing it with fresh materials. She spotted her foreman, and was about to go see if there was somewhere specific she should sit when someone took her by the arm with a grip like steel. When she turned to see who had restrained her, she realized the comparison was rather apt.
"Ms. Walker? I'm Tobin Lomas, aeronautical engineering. Cmon, we can sit with the other specialists." His attitude and bearing belied his appearance. For a man who acted and spoke with such youth, he looked to be fairly aged as well as rough about the edges like a man who'd been carved from old stone before being blasted in a furnace for a few days in an attempt to regularize his angular features. On his back, he seemed to be gifted with a series of four extra limbs which folded up when they weren't needed. Tobin explained that he had joined the searing spear, but was now excused from service by virtue of his botched power cell installation which to him was a shame since he had three other, perfectly good ones that were more than capable of keeping his bionics going for weeks without charge.
Catnip was led to a small group of people seated near the front row talking amongst themselves.
"Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce our new mechanic. Everyone, this is Catnip. Catnip, this is everyone." Tobin said. Most of those in the group grunted some cursory introduction and Catnip, falling into her old adaptability, did the same. Tobin the went through each person individually by name.
"This is Tenny Parsons, the electrician. Patrick Danneville and George Brookside, our architectural engineers. Felicia Thomkens, our personal foreman. Finally there's Leila Kestrel, the projects personal doctor and pharmacy all in one." Leila, a woman with the head of a bird who reminded Catnip a little of her friend crow back home didn't seem very happy to be called anyone's "personal pharmacy," nodded her head and asked "where's Sam?"
"Not here yet," Tobin shrugged. "Sam Pace is our computers guy, but he's a bit slow. He'll be here."
-
Throughout the introductions, the eyes of the others kept drifting down to Catnip's neck. She had gotten used to it's weight around her neck, and had forgotten the collar that marked her out as a slave.
"When did they start giving slaves important jobs?" Patrick snarked. Tobin winced. "So rat, what makes you better than a normal person at this job? Why do you get it when a real person could be doing it?"
Catnip felt nettled, and a bit pissed. This Patrick was what anyone from the farm save mica or Kathrine would call, "a shithead." The "man" looked thin and pale, and quite possibly malnourished to the point of ghoulishness. She supposed it wasn't any kind of mutation, just a mishap of genetics, sickness, or possibly drugs. The xenophobia of God's Army was one thing, but she was utterly unfamiliar with this brand of racist classism. "I built a train." She growled, hoping to take him off guard. He wasn't.
"I bet it was a peice of shit too, rats can't build anything good except warrens and crumb snatch-" Felicia, a sturdily built woman with a shock of curly blond hair, slapped Patrick on the back of the head hard enough to make his teeth click together.
"She's an expert mechanic in a town where mechanics have fallen out of practice or have stopped working altogether. Show some respect. She comes with glowing recommendations and even a good word from her owner, Ms. Pinky of-"
"Pinky!" Patrick cried, still rubbing his head, "So she isn't even a mechanic at all! She's one of Pinky's whores! Spread your legs for us little whore. How many dicks did you suck to-" Patrick said whore so that it rhymed with "tour," and it annoyed Catnip. Fortunately, before she herself could haul off and hit the man, Felicia did it for her. No slap this, but a hard right hook to the ear that sent him reeling and sprawling. Before he could rise and fight back like his body language suggested he would do, a boot came down on his back and held him.
"Making friends Felicia?" Said the head foreman. Felicia nodded seriously.
"Yessir. Just meeting the help and making friends all over the place." She said. Patrick managed to free himself from under the Foreman's boot and stand.
"I quit. Nobody said anything about having to work with rats. Whore rats!" The head foreman shook his head, but the smile never left his face.
"No you don't. You are up to your eyeballs in debt. You wanna pay it off, you'll keep working." At the mention of a debt, Patrick backed down with his cheeks ablaze. Catnip considered. It seemed even victims could be bullies.
"Alright ladies, have a seat. There are enough people here that we can get started. Specialists, front and center."
-
It turned out that "front and center" meant "up here on the stage" and Catnip wasn't sure she liked that. Meeting with people one on one, or in small groups, was fine enough. Heck, large groups she could do. This was an auditorium though, filled with many people. Fortunately, she didn't have to worry much about doing any talking herself.
"Ok everyone. As we all know, Pricetown has come under... Attack... Once again by the, ur, Mycus..." Said the head foreman, stumbling over the words a bit. The room filled with a low murmur and the fear in the room spiked. Catnip was surprised to find that she could smell it. An aroma of sweats sour tang mixing with the sharp sheared copper of adrenaline. It wasn't a pleasant smell. In the short silence that followed, the sound of the electric generator running the lights was very loud in the distance.
"This place is a defense measure we could have used during the great burning, had it not been dynamited before the... Slaughter... Began." The murmur hushed a little, and someone in the crowd asked, "Hey, woah, the place is still standing Cranston. Hell, the tower itself looks alright. What's with this dynamite crap?"
Cranston, the head foreman, nodded. "Sure it's still standing. The asshole responsible didn't take out this part of it. The damage is underground. There's a whole facility under our feet. Completely separate from the lab in town. That's what you lot are here for. There's a lot of rubble to clear out, and a lot of reinforcing to do. To that end, we've brought on two architectural engineers, Mr. Danville and Mr. Brookside, to oversee the construction work and to make sure everything stays architecturally sound. After that, Mrs. Parsons will run wiring and get everything hooked back up. Catnip and Tobin will be examining the dishes and the machinery respectively. The lot of you are to assist in any way you can. Any questions?"
There were a few, of course. We're there any Mycus down there, how would they be paid, how did they know the tower would work, and how did the foreman know what the tower did anyway. All these questions and more we're answered carefully, leaving very little out. No, there was no Mycus down stairs, but their we're screamers. The shattered helm would take care of it. They would be paid in watermarks like everyone else working in Pricetown. The tower would work only if they got it working. Once that was done, the foreman knew it would work because it had worked before. Cranston was a survivor of the great burning after all.
-
The final bit of business for the orientation was the introductions of the specialists. Tobin went first, introducing himself quickly and without much fuss. After him, Tenny stood and gave an even shorter introduction. "Hello, I'm Tenny and I'm an electrician..." Tenny was human, but small and homely. To Catnip, she looked a bit like a collection of small flighty animals stuffed into a coat trying to masquerade as a person, and her demeanor did nothing to improve this perception.
After Tenny, Patrick pushed himself to center stage, seeming like he was forcing his way through an invisible crowd. With every word of his rather long "speech" about himself, Catnip grew to like him less and less. When he wasn't being blatantly offensive, he came off as awkward and a little fake. Catnip suspected that his show of aggression and general unpleasantness might have been a put on to cover for some other failing.
George, like Tenny was quiet and small but where Tenny was meek, George Brookside was confident. Every step he took was one of measured certainty. He moved easily, and spoke so as well.
Leila did not stand, preferring simply to remain seated and nodding gently when she was called. After her, it was Catnip's turn.
"I'm um... Catnip." She mumbled. Someone in the auditorium shouted for her to speak up, and she could feel the warmth in her face. Catnip could deal with and charm people one on one or even in small groups, but such a large gathering made her nervous. The feeling was compounded by her lack of fur, still not grown back entirely from her shaving at Kings Court. The effect made her look a bit freakish. Her features combined with her numerous scars made her look, she found, like one of the Cor. Her whiskers had come back, and with them her balance, which she was thankful for. "I'm a mechanic. I'm from New eng-land. I have a girlfriend named-"
Behind her, from the direction she knew to be Patrick, she heard "pffft, gay." And then the hard smack of a hand making contact with the back of his head. Catnip stood stock still, not sure how to go on when someone touched her shoulder.
"It's ok, that's enough sweet heart, you can go sit." Felicia said. Catnip was relieved to be paroled so from an experience she felt was only going to get worse.
"And I'm your secondary foreman." Felicia went on after she was sure Catnip was reseated. "The big boss has other fish to fry and you'll be reporting to me. Every day, six AM to six PM. Understood?" The gathered laborers seemed to, and so she passed the floor back to the head foreman. There were a few more small details to work out, and by the end of the day Catnip had been assigned a basic task to get started, and her choice of assistance.
-
That night after work, Catnip made her slow way back to Pinky's Pleasure Palace. Beyond those double doors would be the mingled smells of perfume, liquor, and food. The money which King had sent Minx and Catnip with to retrieve Pinky had been used to retrofit the old shopping center, Pre-Catalysm Pricetowns only major feature besides the base and refugee center (and the lab hidden beneath it), into an entertainment venue. Pinky had the experience and the know how to pull it off, billing the Pleasure Palace as a place where one could get a quick bite and an easy fuck at the end of a hard day. Food was something King hadn't cared to deal in. Pinky on the other hand knew that not everybody was down for the kind of trade King's court specialized in. The Pleasure Palace was smaller, but the Pleasure Palace was better.
As she expected, pushing her way into the foyer, she was hit with the smells. Mostly food, which tantalized her at the end of the day. The doorman took her bag and checked it carefully, then gave it back as always. The entrance was quiet, but the sounds of people from the inner room came muffled through the expensive double glass of the foyers inner door. She could see the people beyond, enjoying meals and the company of Pinky's girls. Some of them would later head up to the back rooms, where they would perform the trade they were used to while others would walk the floor, serving drinks and being charming.
Catnip moved instead for the stairs. She wasn't allowed in the main room, being neither server nor call girl. Catnip couldn't even cook. The best consolation she had was that she was at least allowed to eat the meals prepared by the staff. Catnip stopped a server in the hall and made a polite request. The meal would come out of her debt, if she'd been a debt slave. Instead it was a flat loss, and that suited Catnip fine. She wasn't spiteful towards Pinky but at the same time she wasn't overly fond of being a slave either.
"How was it?" Minx asked. She was surprised to see Catnip back before noon and worried that the job may not have gone over so well.
"Fine. It was just some kind of meeting thing. I guess there will be work tomorrow. There were a lot of people..."
Minx slapped her on the back, and Catnip wanted to tell her not to. She hated being slapped on the back almost as much as she hated being called "champ" or "boss." Soon she was alone in her room, putting aside her bag and taking out her tools. Before she'd finished her nightly ritual, her order came and was set aside as usual. From the small window in her room, she looked out at the eastern stars appearing in the sky, and the mountainous horizon far in the distance. A plan began to form. She couldn't walk, but there was always a way. Her transport would have to be tough and have a measure of endurance. It had to be able to shed the Mycus that was known to inhabit this side of that distant natural barrier, and it had to have a lot of power. She could design it, but she didn't think she could do it alone or as a slave. She needed her freedom, and she needed help. After her dishes were taken away and her ritual complete, she lay in bed and schemed. When sleep took her, Catnip dreamed the long dreams of home.
-
Pricetown slept, and as it did, a form was moving amongst the trash of chief street. The form was small and black, a relative rarity in the desert hub in the elevated portion of the Arizona desert. Cousin saw the creature and turned back, making not a sound. Cousin was mad, but he wasn't stupid. The shattered helm would see the screamer and blow it away. Cousin could bark at it and alert people to it's presence, but cousin was just one coyote. In a one on one, the solo screamer would rip him up. Cousin was again turned aside though by something more dangerous. It shambled, moving it's grotesque, swollen body along the narrow alley and breaking out into the open on chief street. Cousin had to scurry, practically yelping, out of the mycus horrors way and made it just in time to evade it's attention. It mumbled and rasped insanely to itself.
"Rita... Rita... My queen... My everything... Rita... My... Heeead..."
The screamer saw it right away and took shape, black ooze streaked with trash and sand formed into something like a small chimp with a pumpkin on it's shoulders where it's head should have been. That gourd of a head opened on a bleak abyss from which came the deafening shreik of Pricetown's most dangerous pest.
The effect on the fungal monster was immediate and galvanic. It clutched at what had once been it's head and screamed in furious agony. When the pitch of the screaming thing lowered and became more like a howl, the exploder keeled over and howled right back. The screamer went on and on, seeming to hold the mycus in place until there came a thunderous boom, cutting through the din and splattering the screamer into smaller safer gobbits.
"Rita..." The thing huffed before one of the responding guards put it to the match. There was no need to worry about it exploding on them, the screamers howl had made sure of that.
"It's the same principal as the howling tower you're working on Catnip." Efram told her after being asked how the screamer had stunned the exploder. The events of the night before were big in local news, and all the bigger since it had happened on chief street, Pricetown's main avenue.
"It doesn't like the sound or something?" She asked again, getting a similar answer to the one she'd received before. Efram sometimes puzzled over Catnip. She wasn't a Misling, he knew that for a fact now. Her tail was too long, ears too pointed, muzzle too narrow. The project had also never produced a Misling fitted with a neural neutralizer before. Most Mislings were equipped with a simple tracking chip with their identity imprinted on it. Catnip though was still possessed of an unremovable control module, and a device that would likely kill her if ever activated. Without the control pin though, the module was useless and the still active kill switch could not be turned on. Efram listened carefully when Catnip explained where she was from and her history. What she said meant that perhaps the region beyond the Rockies wasn't lost, or not entirely lost, to the Mycus. He judged her mental age to be somewhere in her late teens, but this too was a reason for wonder. The girl claimed to be twenty four "Christmases" while his advanced medidoc put her age at somewhere between "null" and "indeterminate."
Catnip had been coming in to his office for a weekly check up since she and Minx had strode into his clinic a couple months prior, and today was another of Catnip's appointments. So far, she was still clean and still interesting. She told Efram about her sister and her sisters man. About her girlfriend and all the interesting characters of the farm. In return, he told her the little things one needed to know about Pricetown. Some of the big things too. From him, she learned about the Mycus and the Mislings, and about life in Pricetown. More and more though, he noticed that she seemed disinterested in that last subject. Like the town held no interest to her, a place she saw herself as "passing through."
"You're free to go Ms. Walker, don't forget your coffee, and have a good day at work." He said, finishing up his notes and placing a mark on her chart. Catnip was given a styrofoam cup filled with coffee, spiked with hot cocoa, and ushered out. Efram watched her go with a bit of worry. The girl was said to be rather energetic and talkative, but over the last couple weeks she'd talked less and less. Either she was getting depressed, or she was scheming. Catnip would say the latter, because it was true, but also because she didn't know what the former meant.
-
The next day was much as the first, except with more harassment. Catnip had grown a bit bitter over what she'd been through, and that was what dominated her thoughts for a good portion of the day. This was because the day priors absentee workers finally showed up, and among them was a familiar face.
Catnip had asked for an assistant that second day. Back home, Kathrine had served this role while hanging around the workshop. Always moping around and looking sad in a cute sort of way that made Catnip simultaneously want to give her a hug, and shake the living hell out of her while telling her to cheer up. Kathrine was genuinely helpful to though, passing just the right tool to Catnip every time. She wasn't here though. None of her friends were here. Instead, she had a lineup of people waiting to be selected. Not that any of them looked too eager to be working for or even with her. They had their qualifications all in order, not that they meant much to her. So and so spent three years at Arizona technical college, this and that one worked for Charlie motors for seven years, she and t'other worked in a garage since highschool. Words that Catnip didn't understand and didn't much care for floated by until that familiar face was standing in front of her.
"L." Catnip growled. The tall Misling flinched, which made a bit of a sight. Catnip, who stood petite by some standards and perfectly average by others, glaring up into the face of a woman a good foot taller than her. The shaven rat and the cowering mouse.
"I-I'm sorry nip, i-"
"It's Miss Walker. Where's Mark?"
"I- he- I don't know. He wasn't paying my contract, so the agency seized it and put me to work in the airfarm. They let me transfer and-"
"Shut up. I don't really care. You work for me now."
The other applicants were clearly upset about Catnip's choice. L had no experience with the kind of work they expected Catnip to put them through, but to Catnip that mattered very little. She needed someone she knew, even someone as treacherous as she thought L was, and wasn't really looking for a mechanically minded assistant. Such "help" would counter her and might even undo her work.
-
If Catnip had to give a grade to L's performance over the next few days, she would have given her a C- at most. She was a fantastic book keeper, a solid A+. When it came to hugs and encouragement though, L lost marks. Mostly because Hugs was an "N/A" and L seemed to lost in herself to encourage. Tool knowledge as well was lacking. In all, Catnip thought that when it came to being an assistant, L would never stack up to Kathrines pure usefulness and appeal. If Catnip knew what "bias" was, she probably would have reconsidered her judgement a little. Still, there was the regrettable fact of L's complicity in her current state and it was that which held the feelings behind her treatment by Catnip.
"I need a clampy thingy for this part here, if this isn't held in place while I work it's not going to be straight. Are you taking this down?" Catnip said. L was jotting down Catnip's desired tool and what it was needed for with her shorthand, perfected by years of bookkeeping and gambling. For the time being, Catnip and L were relegated to examination work. Looking and seeing what would be needed. The works below and around them went ahead steadily as cleanup proceeded as planned. Somewhere, Felicia and Tenny were puzzling over the plants security computer while the architects did about the same work as Catnip, checking and rechecking.
By the end of the fourth day, the workers had cleared out the entire top floor and began on the second. On the first floor was discovered something of interest to the job site. A short term storage room marked with a simple sign reading "Wind Cell." Inside, the room had been devastated by some kind of explosions, and contained very little besides the ruins of several storage shelves, and some kind of cannisters that some angry good had decided to rip apart and twist back together again.
"What kind of cell is this?" Tenny had asked, examining the cannisters. Felicia took the hunk of metal and looked it over before passing it to Catnip. "I think it's a wind battery. The plant mainframe has whole files on them, some big energy initiative. A single one of these could power Pricetown for generations."
"What make it work?" Catnip wondered aloud, "I could use something like that." She turned the piece of metal over and an odd pinkish sand came out, which she examined very carefully.
Patrick snickered, "For what? Power your vibrator?" Catnip glared at him, and so to for that matter did L.
"Enough Pat. Some kind of stone, but without proper precautions the stones have a habit of destroying the area around them. I guess they aren't exactly made of stern stuff themselves because they usually get broken up in the process."
The room seemed to support the guesses Felicia was making about the batteries destructive potential. The walls were crumbling and seemed to even bough outward slightly. Patrick examined the walls and gave an assessment surprisingly free of insult.
"It's reinforced concrete, cept it looks like something other than steel for the rails. They're thick too, I think it's that experimental super alloy stuff." He said, prying out a loose bar. To everyone's surprise, he handed it not to Felicia, but to Catnip, "Tell us what you know, oh mechanic of vermin."
Again Catnip glared while L bristled. She took the bar though, and looked closely. Catnip had not seen the bars make before except as sheets Floyd brought her. Back on the farm, she had four of them. Small three foot by three foot panels her grandfather figure had brought back. Catnip struck the bar one of her screwdrivers and the sound it made was heavy but sonorous, sending a shiver down her spine and into the tip of her tail.
"I love that sound. It's the good stuff alright, super alloy. If I could get my hands on more of it back home..." She let the statement hang, simply appreciating the heavy material in her hands.
"If that's the case," Patrick put in, "then despite the shape of the room, it should be perfectly fine to leave it as is. I'm willing to bet that peice is just a fluke when it comes to the damages here." He took the bar from Catnip, and she was almost loath to give it up.
Felicia examined the peice of metal carefully, turning it over as Catnip had. "If there are more of these down below somewhere, we are going to need them. I suppose the worst we could find is that most of them will be busted up. If it comes to that, hopefully the backup generators can make this tower sing." She said, then had a thought, "what if this place wasn't bombed like we were told? Nothing sinister or anything like that, but no one was actually here when the shit went down right?"
They stood around in silence, the walls around them punctuating the danger. L broke the silence.
"What if there are more wind cells down there?"
"We will deal with that when we get to it."
-
And so they would but for the time being, Catnip was tasked with setting up an auxiliary power supply for the facility. A generator at least, and also get a few of the excavation equipment back up and running. She thought about the prior while she worked on the latter. I was slow work though, most of the parts she wanted were in the now sealed off military base or lab. What wasn't had been appropriated by the aeroponics farm. Catnip spent a lot of time watching the work as well too. Workers jackhammering fragments of concrete into smaller peices to be hauled away in wheelbarrows and then shoveling away the left over grit and gravel.
Sometimes, things would be found in the rubble. Mostly office furniture, but one day a body was found. On another, someone struck metal with their spade a dug out another twisted cannister. The pink stone that was found within (just a tiny fragment Felicia noted) was passed around to a couple of the specialists. The architects agreed it was some kind of fossil, or perhaps an aggregate of some kind. "Good concrete material." Peter put in. Catnip was fascinated by it even more than the others. The little pink fleck seemed to tremble just the very slightest bit. When placed in a ziplock bag, it wasn't long before the bag had somehow inflated and burst. This rather gentle explosion released a gust from the bag, weak but strong enough to blow papers from a desk and ruffle Catnip's hair if she'd had any to ruffle. She wanted to see more of them, a whole one if possible. The fragment had been blown out of the bag and into the realm of lost things with it's little display. Felicia assumed it had been destroyed.
A few days later, the cleanup came to a sudden halt when an ungodly wail erupted from below. A sound the likes of which Catnip had never heard, but was altogether a little familiar. She'd heard the sound a couple weeks earlier, and a few months before she'd heard it while being dragged out of the desert. Screamers. The lowest level was filled with them. As workers descended into the depths, they found themselves faced with an abrupt break in the main staircase, dropping away into a sheer pit. Light was brought and shone down. What greeted their eyes was clear water and a shiny blackness reminiscent of polished rubber. When the light hit it, there was a ripple that moved across the surface of the water and the next thing anyone knew, the air was filled with the screaming of the pool below.
-
For the rest of the day, Catnip helped sift rubble while the others went back to their ordinary duties. Felicia toyed with the sites computer network, a job she did herself because the projects computer specialist still hadn't shown up. Tobin was up above on the tower proper examining the dishes, while Tenny went over the wiring, carefully marking with red tape cable bundles that needed replacing. The architects gave the ok on the condition of the roof, but it was a cautious ok. Some sections didn't exactly look stable, particularly around the front of the main administration building.
"It could be nothing," Patrick said, "but all the same, that concrete has cracked a bit. I think the weather has gotten into it and stressed it. Shouldn't be a big issue though. It's got rebar running through it." Catnip thought she understood. Quinn had once explained to her how moisture would seep into cracks in the pavement and when it froze, the resulting ice would gradually widen them. it rarely rained in Pricetown, but it sometimes snowed at night. When day came, the snow would melt off. When night fell again, what was left would freeze over.
Catnip was getting ready to leave for the night when a call went up. A murmur of concern from what work force was still at the facility, gathered outside. She rushed to join them, meeting L as she ran.
"What's going on?" She asked.
L shrugged and ran after. "I don't know, something going on up the tower."
It was hard to see in the failing light, but up near the structures zenith, the crowd could see the outline of Tobin's large figure moving among the girders and rails. It was only due to the light he carried that he could be seen at all. When it suddenly dropped away, falling the length of the tower to explode in a shower of glass and sparks on the ground far below, seeing him became downright impossible.
"Why isn't he up on the walkway?" Someone shouted. Catnip could see well enough in the dark, but she couldn't see any reason for the man's erratic climb. Except maybe...
Catnip broke into a run for the tower, avoiding the broken lamp and taking the stairs two steps at a time. She couldn't be sure given the distance, but she got the impression that the cyborg wasn't alone up there, and whoever it was wasn't exactly friendly. She climbed for all she was worth and managed to reach the first of many walkways running the circumference of the tower, when the crowd below let out a sound of horror as something fell screaming past her. When she looked up, the tower was unoccupied. Below her, Tobin lay in a mangled heap among the ruins of his lamp.
-
She kept moving, intent on finding out who had done this and dragging them down, unconscious or in the same way they'd done Tobin if necessary. Below, Felicia and several workers were checking on Tobin and finding out what they already knew. He was dead, his mechanical arms twisted into an unrecognizable mass of metal beneath his considerable weight. Catnip took the steps two at a time, ignoring the calls rising from below. She cleared the second landing and had barely made the third when something dropped past her like a stone, vanishing into the gloom like a shadow. There was the impression of a face and a small body, then it was gone.
"They can't survive the fall..." Catnip mumbled, shifting her momentum back down. When she arrived at the first landing again, Felicia and several guards were filing up. Catnip waved them back and shouted "Down! Down! They dropped down! Whoever it is is probably still down there! Let's go!"
The guards didn't need to be told twice, they reversed direction and stormed down, lamps in hand, and began searching the base of the tower. All that night they searched up and down, but they found no trace of anyone else having been on the tower. In the end, it was decided that no one was really sure if they had seen anyone else up there or not. Only Catnip had the natural night vision to say for sure, but who would believe a slave? Tobin's death was for a time written off as an accident, and his duties were split between the remaining specialists.
-
The day after, everyone was given the day off. "A day of respect, stay home." The reality of it was that the city watch needed to investigate. The city watch, and several beaurocrats from the council. Tobin was a respected man, a man with friends in a couple high places here and there, though most of those places were unoccupied now since the slaughter at Kings Court.
That morning Catnip spent in the market indulging in petty theft. She had a knack for it, it turned out. Not a great talent, but she got away with it more often than not. So far she'd been caught four times. Four times in which punishment had been delivered forthwith, and Pinky not informed. It was only a matter of time until she figured out what King's big mistake was out there doing though. After the morning, as noon and hunger hit, Catnip went back to her room at Pinky's. There she would pray, plan, and lie in the dark wait for sleep. Today was different though.
As she entered the foyer, smelling the smells and hearing the sounds of Pinky's Pleasure Palace, there arose a scuffle in the wait area.
"Catnip!"
"I told you fucker, she doesn't take clients!"
"Fuck off me! Yo, rat!"
Several workers and patrons swiveled their heads to see who would use a slur like "rat" under Pinky's roof, and the scuffle with security that would surely follow. It was Patrick. Catnip grimaced. Of all the places she had to see him outside of work, didn't it just have to be here.
"What do you want?" Catnip hissed, putting that extra bit of vitriol into the way she said it and not breaking her stride. Patrick broke away from Minx who was dutifully trying to keep him away from Catnip and not doing such a good job.
"Wanna talk, but not here. Too many people to hear."
"Yeah. No. Maybe you should-"
"Your different from the others, got sight these grey's don't got. Me too in fact. You ran for the tower and no one else did, why?"
"What does it matter?"
"Maybe get this sorted, get a reward. Maybe buy your scraggy ass out of that collar. Can't talk about it here rat."
Catnip hesitated and considered. She would certainly love to be free again to pursue her road home. But that took capital and in Pricetown, barter just wasn't going to cut it.
"Alright, fine. We talk, then you go."
"Sure, sure." He said. Catnip didn't like the look on his face when he said it though. She decided to take comfort in the fact that she saw Minx in the corner of her eye, heading up to Pinky's office and shooting glances her way. She sighed, and led the way.
-
"Alright, what do you want?"
Patrick strode into Catnip's room like he owned it, and shut the door quietly behind him. Catnip didn't like that, didn't want the door closed. 'You couldn't,' she thought, 'kick someone's ass out through a closed door. Unless you were Lilith...' The image of Lilith kicking this man through a closed door made her chuckle a little. She would pay good chocolate to witness that.
"What's so funny? Feeling nervous rat?"
"No. Just say what you wanted to say and get out. I have work to do."
He made a circuit of her room. "Sure you do." He said.
It was a rather sparse room, the walls bare except for a single poster featuring a cat hanging from a branch and bearing the legend "hang in there." In the window, Catnip had hung her collection of shiny geegaws. Glass beads and Crystal prisms. Things to catch the light and brighten her darker days. Beneath the simple bed, barely hidden by the blanket, Patrick spotted the bottles. A veritable horde of booze, all of it unopened, all of it most likely swiped. He fished under and came up with a squarish bottle labeled "Captain Sam's Single Malt." Catnip watched him wordlessly as he helped himself to a stash which seemed more attractive every day.
"I think Tobin was murdered." He said after popping the cap and taking a deep pull from the bottle, "you have shit taste in liquer."
Catnip ignored the slight against her choice of drink. Catnip wasn't drinking them for one and for two, she didn't care for what she was drinking if she had been. She waited for him to go on, but it seemed that he expected her to ask for clarification. Satisfaction, he would not get. Catnip didn't like him, and that was a relatively rare experience for her. It had become more common here in Pricetown but she still got along with most people.
"And I think I know who. You see this?" He put a finger to his right temple and his eyes shifted in color. The iris expanded to let in more light, and Catnip realized that the man was a cyborg. "Impressed? I got them for work. The point is, these babies are fitted with a lot of interesting bits. Range finder, glare reducer, diamond cornea, and most importantly, short scale video capture, thermal imaging, and night vision."
"So you saw who did it then." Catnip said, reigning in her excitement and momentarily forgetting who she was talking to.
"Sure. I'm gonna meet with someone later tonight at my place. I'll chat em up, make em feel comfortable, then I'll take em over to the job site and confront them there. If I can get them to admit doing it, present them with the evidence, maybe I can squeeze some dough put of them before I turn em in!" He said, snickering. He took another belt from the bottle and wandered closer to Catnip. She could smell him now, the strong reek of alcohol. The bottle in his hand it seemed was not his first.
"So who was it then?" She asked, taking a wary step away from Patrick and his stink.
"Wouldn't you like to know? I'll tell you what, you do me a favor and I'll tell ya."
An alarm bells went off in Catnip's mind, loud and urgent. She wanted to ask what, but his proximity coupled with the sound of his voice and the set of his body told her. Carmelo, that long lost errand boy, had put on the same sort of demeanor when he made his deliveries. Though where his we're comical and sometimes a little charming, Patrick was just menacing and overbearing.
"I'm not interested."
"That ain't an option anymore." He said, sweeping up the distance between them, "Rats are only good for working, and the only work whores do is in the bed. You want to know who offed Tobin, your gonna have to work for it." His voice took on a husky desperate sound as he started in on his advances. Catnip tried to push him away but it only seemed to make him more feisty. He set the bottle down hard and grabbed her roughly about the hips and breasts and buttocks, groping and seeking.
"You whores only do it for a couple reasons. For the money or for the pleasure of it. I bet your the second, you look like the kind. I'll bet you moan like a-"
She hit him with the bottle. Shards of glass flew and both of them were soused in strong liquer. Patrick reeled and tripped over something on the floor, Catnip's mechanical gauntlet. It had been knocked off the single lonely table when he'd made his rush at her. It didn't take long for him to recover, and he was already trying to find an angle to tackle her, undoinh his belt as he did so while she brandished the broken bottle at him. Then, the door slammed open, and Minx rushed in. The thing in her hand was long, heavy, and most importantly padded. The bat. A sawn off luisville slugger some genius had wrapped in yoga mat to make it less lethal. She came in like one of the furies and unloaded on solid swing on Catnip's assailant, connecting with the side of his head and sending him sprawling to the floor.
Minx dropped the bat and rushed to Catnip.
"Put it down nip, I got him, I got him. See?"
Catnip did see. He was down, knocked out for the moment with his jeans halfway down his ass revealing an expanse of his time stained jockies. Still, she didn't drop the broken bottle, she was too shocked, too on edge and fighting off her conditioning. Minx took the chance and came in low. She managed to slap the bottle aside, cutting herself a little, before lunging in for the hug. Catnip screamed and fought her, but then someone else was there holding her too. It was L, sorry faced and worried.
Pinky was in too, and with her were two heavies. Guards she kept around for just such an occasion.
"Get this fuck awake and out of here. Minx, is she alright?"
"I think she'll be alright ma'am. She hit him with the bottle. Nip, where did you get all this booze?"
"It doesn't matter Minx." Pinky snapped, "head down to storage and get this dog some smelling salts."
It turned out the salts weren't needed though. As one of the heavies hefted him up, Patricks head lolled to the side and he groaned. The bruise forming just above his temple was going to be an ugly one, but that seemed to be all it was.
"Coming around d ma'am." Said the other guard. He turned to Patrick suspended in his colleagues arms and slapped him. "Wake up fuck boy, the madam wants a word."
He came around quick, and uttered a foggy "wazat? Fuckin hit me..." Pinky advanced on him, uttered "ok," and then did as he seemed to be asking. She slapped him, giving the other cheek a strike as well for good measure.
"Take this scum out of here and beat him to within an inch of his life if you ever see him so much as set foot within sight of the pleasure palace. Do you understand me?"
"Yes ma'am." The guards said in unison.
Catnip had dropped the jagged bit of bottle, and Pinky turned to her. She was shaking all over, revulsed in a way she hadn't been in all her life. The man had done little more than grope her, but she felt dirty. If this was what it felt like, she never wanted to be touched this way again. Minx let her go, and L soon after. Once released, Catnip threw herself onto her bed and curled up, weeping.
"I told you, life's hard chica." Pinky said, striding over and seating herself next to the distraught mechanic. She stroked Catnip gently on the temple and ahe pulled away, staring wild eyed up at her mistress. She was, for better or worse, her mistress.
"I want to go home!" She sobbed, burying her face in the pillow. Pinky gently stroked her shoulder. As a business woman, Pinky was strict and sometimes rather cut throat. But when it came right down to it, she felt for people. She was a madam first, but at times like this she could be gentle.
"I know." She said, "I know."
-
Minx and L stayed with Catnip for the rest of that day and a good portion of the night, talking and sharing. Over the course of the day, Catnip calmed and talked. She did a lot of talking at their behest.
She talked a lot about Kathrine. When Catnip had been spirited away, she had just been beginning her relationship with Kathrine. Except that wasn't right. Their relationship had really started the moment Kathrine had come stumbling out of the woods. It wasn't "love at first sight." Not for Catnip anyway. For Catnip, they were just friends. Somewhere along the way though they had somehow become more. When it happened, she couldn't say. Minx told her that that's how it worked. No one is ever just "in love." It's a thing that grows and creeps up on you until one day you realize you don't know what you'd do without the object of your affection. For Kathrine, they'd been a couple for a years. For Catnip, it had been only a short while. It was coping with the realization of her feelings that had taken her off guard before, made her hesitant.
"She makes me feel..." Catnip said, "I don't know. A little shakey and a bit woozy."
"You mean light headed?" Asked L. She glanced at Minx and the two of them shared a knowing look.
"I guess..." Catnip said, sitting up on her bed. She clasped her hands together and twiddled her thumbs while she explained how it felt to be near her. Even when she was going through withdrawal, Catnip had felt a kind of greatful adoration for the maid, bordering on dependence. She explained this to them, and broke down.
"I promised... Why am I collecting all this... This shit if I promised?"
Catnip sprang up from the bed and whipped off the blanket, then crawled underneath. She pushed bottles put, bottle after bottle. Whiskey, beer, scotch, bourban, rose', even a bottle of goldschlager. One after another came rolling or sliding out. Absinthe, moonshine, cheap ale, a six pack of lager, honey mead, champagne, and wine. Enough liquer to stock Pinky's for a month.
"Nip, Jesus what... Where did you get so much?" Minx said, shocked by the sudden change in mood and subject.
"I... I stole it."
"What!? You didn't take it from-"
"No... From chief street."
"And you weren't caught?"
Catnip shook her head while the rest of her shook in a different way. She wanted a drink, the other girls could see it. She wanted it and was resisting, but not doing very well. L told Minx to get someone to come get this stuff, and to be discreet. Pinky would have to know, but there was no reason to let it get any further than that. The blanket vanished into the dimness of under the bed and made the mechanic vanish. All but one tear gleaming eye and the tip of her long leathery tail.
The booze was gathered up and taken away without comment. Pinky knew it wouldn't be politic to chastise her for stealing. Besides, it gave her ideas. If Catnip could get away with swiping things as big as a six pack flat of beers, she may be able to get away with other things. The albino looked over the collection with a mixture of awe, sadness, and distaste.
"She's a hardcore alcoholic and a thief." Pinky commented while she looked over the bottles hiding the surface of her desk the next morning. It had been a busy one so far, and she wasn't even fully awake yet. Minx, get Kite to bring a pot of coffee up here, black, and an egg. Oh, and before I forget and end up having to do it myself..."
She fished an envelope out of her desk, wrote some simple message on it, put something in it, and gave it to Minx.
"Pay the girl for her stash."
"Woah Pinky, really? But it's stolen."
"I won't tell if you don't, she's had a hard night anyway. Make sure she understands she's being watched now though. If she keeps up this criminal shit, I at least don't want it coming back to my door. Oh, and get Kite to bring the stock cart for all this alcohol so he can put it in storage."
After minx had gone on her errand, Pinky picked through the bottles again and found the bottle of goldschlager. She didn't know that if given the chance and a total failure of her will, Catnip would guzzle the schnapps down like water, gold flakes and all. Pinky herself hadn't seen this particular beverage since her own pre-cataclysm club had been shut down what seemed like an age ago. She took it from the horde and carefully placed it next to the other high end drinks in her personal liquer cabinet.
Catnip was getting ready to go to work when Minx slipped the envelope under the door. Inside, she found twenty water marks, and a note. Two notes in fact. The first was from Minx, outlining all that Pinky had wanted her to pass on. The other though was simple and short. It said simply, "This is for the alcohol. Do not let me catch you stealing in my house. Have a good day at work chica."
Catnip flipped the marks like a flip book between her fingers. She hated the dumb paper money of Pricetown, but capital was capital. Also, Pinky hadn't said "don't steal." She'd simply said, "don't steal in my house." It made her feel a little better, but she wondered what would happen if she went directly to Pinky with what she took... No, that wouldn't work. She would have to think on it, and even consider if it was a path she wanted to take. Stealing was wrong, Kathrine told her that, but Catnip had grown up in the lab stealing. Stealing things from scientists, stealing things from security. Hiding things from those same people and even stealing from her brothers and sisters. They'd all done it.
"C'mon Nip, your going to be late." L said through the door, reminding her of her work obligation. She sighed heavily, a noise her assistant heard clearly, and began to dread work. Patrick would be there, and she didn't want to see him. She didn't want to be left alone with him either... L opened the door a little and urged her to hurry again, sticking her nose through in a way that made catnip laugh a little and banished a bit of her trepidation for the coming day. She still worried about Patrick though, about what she would do if he came at her again.
Fortunately, she didn't have to worry about Patrick. By the time she saw him again, she would have other problems.
-
Catnip was told she could take the day off and she was sorely tempted. In the end though, and at the last minute, she decided to go anyway and had to run to catch up with L. She was afraid of seeing Patrick again, didn't want to be caught alone with him. L of course would keep that from happening. Minx made sure that the Misling knew that she was responsible for Catnip's predicament, and so in Minx's eyes, responsible for her well being.
It seemed though that they had nothing to worry about that day. Felecia gave Catnip a form the fill out with the heading "order of protection from stalking, aggrivated stalking, and harassment."
"What's this?" She asked, and L answered for the foreman. "It's a restraining order girly."
"Thaaats right." Felecia said cheerily, "your boss made one fiery complaint to the primary foreman and the council of three. Not that it matters much, Pat didn't show up for work. That's what the little x by 'name' indicates. They couldn't find him to make him sign it. I imagine he probably sobered up and got wind of what was comin' and decided to pound sand. Debtors who get charged with crimes, even petty ones... Er, no offense, tend to end up as true slaves or getting drafted into the reserve."
Catnip looked at the form. It was filled with big words she didn't understand and terms she understood even less. L told her to fold it up and keep it with her. If she so much as caught sight of the man, Catnip could call the shattered helm and use it to have him arrested and thrown in a cell.
The rest of the day was brightened immeasurably by this news. Not only was Patrick not here, he also wouldn't be bothering her any time soon either. She worried though about what he'd told her, and brought it up then.
"He said he saw someone up on the tower with Tobin. Do you think-"
"Shush. Shush your mouth little lady. Tobin had an accident, don't go scaring people with stories of murder. I told Patrick to do the same when he brought it up to me. Yes, he came to me about it as well. Tenny, George, and Leila too. The folks from the shattered helm haven't found any evidence of foul play and they are convinced it was a simple accident, understand?"
There was no fear in Felecias outburst, just exasperation. She had been over this with others this morning and was getting tired of it. It seemed that Patrick had been more open with his information than he let on. "I think," L would later comment during the lunch period, "he just told you it was a secret to get close to you, along with all the promises and shit."
Later, Catnip was taking a walk along the main concorse when she ran into the other architectural engineer, George Bannerman. He was checking over the columns between the concorse windows and taking down notes in a shorthand which was almost robotically blocky.
"Greetings ma'am. I'm sorry to hear of the regretable incident with Mr. Danneville yesterday. I hope you are unharmed?"
Catnip found herself charmed a little by the odd formal way he spoke, and said that she was indeed unharmed. The first impression she'd had of the man from the short icebreaker he'd given on the first day held fast after they'd spoken a bit. George was indeed a professional, quiet and reserved. The exception came as she talked of herself and her life on the farm, in specific, when she talked about the farms cyberneticist.
"Oh! So Zachary survived the Cataclysm then? Absolutely fascinating." He said, but seemed not to be interested in expanding further on it. Instead, he rather abruptly changed the subject and asked, "Would you mind terribly coming along with me? You and your assistant? I have an important section of the facility I need to give my stamp of approval for. Without Mr. Danneville around to double check my work, I won't be able to submit my report."
"Why me?" Catnip asked simply.
-
What George wanted Catnip to look at was a shaft leading from an intact but inaccessible section of the sublevel, all the way up to the tower above. Catnip could see a tiny hole far above where the towers main axle punched up through the roof and connected with the outside world. She wish she could see more than just the axle, the machine that ran it would have to be very large or fairly sophisticated, she believed. George showed her and L around the room, indicating especially the strange teardrop shape of the chamber.
"What do you think, mechanic?" He asked. Catnip didn't answer at first, too busy eyeing the room and making measurements. She couldn't be sure of it, but the shape of the room was important. In her eyes, she could see the imaginary lines and spirals, nonsense numbers and letter, and all the other little things that made up her strange method of measuring by eye.
"I think we should get the lower level drained so I can look at the machine this is a part of." She finally answered.
"Yes, but what about the room itself? Does it look stable?"
"I'd say so, yes. It's an odd shape though, isn't it?"
"Oh yes, a very sturdy shape. What do you think the purpose of such a room would be though? Normally people build rooms like this for decorative purposes, but look, there is nothing ornamental about any of it. I would look at this and think to have professional paint it with images of stars to mimic the night sky or perhaps some simple patterns."
At the side of the room was a walkway, and it was this that the trio stood on while they talked and went about their work. Catnip looked over the railing and noted that even the floor sloped gently into a kind of bowl shape, making it so that there were no walls whatsoever in the chamber.
"I don't know." She said, "I suppose... Maybe it just wasn't finished?"
"I think," put in L, "We aren't seeing everything here. Look at that." She was pointing up at a ring in the wall, connected to the axle via a series of flat angled plates. "Do you think those moved once?"
"It's possible. You know, I bet we could find information about this room on the computer system, so long as it's not off limits."
Catnip nodded, computers were useful and this job would probably be easier if they all used them more. She bet that the howling towers computers probably had plenty to read. She had to pause for a moment though, and asked, "But that Samson guy hasn't been yet. Is it safe? Do you think?" George shrugged, heading for one of the many monitors set into one of the rounded walls.
"How hard can it be?"
-
"Can you get it on? I know that it is receiving power. Ah, here we are. What an obsolete system. Not really surprising for a government installation." George said. Catnip had checked all over the front of the console looking for a switch. Were it her laptop back at home, she would have just pressed the little silver button above the top right side of the keyboard. Up around the back of the monitor though she found it. While running her fingers around the slim screen, her hand encountered something that felt like a button that clicked in when she pushed it. The monitor made a slight hum that subsided after a moment, and the screen lit up with bright blue light.
"Oh! So, what now?" She asked. Catnip wanted to use it, wanted to see how it worked. Back home she hadn't been much into computers for more than just communication when she was too busy to leave the barn and she didn't want to bother Kathrine. Dee had set it up for her. He'd set one up for everybody. Even the 'network' was his doing. It then occured to Catnip that maybe she could send a message through this computer. It was possible, probably. Dee set up the network after all. If this computer was able to get onto the network, she could send a message.
"What are you doing Catnip?" L asked, peeking over her shoulder. George wanted to know the same thing but for the time being, she ignored both of them. Her fingers carefully ticked over the keys she didn't understand and moved the little arrows clumsily around the screen.
"I'm sending a message. This computer can probably get onto Dee's-" She didn't get a chance to finish. The console flicked off, and the red lights overhead began to flash.
"What did you do Catnip!?"
"Nothing! I didn't even get to-"
"EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN! UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IN SECTION C, MAINFLOOR SECTOR A! REPORT TO YOUR STATIONS IMMEDIATELY! SECURITY PERSONNEL TO STATIONS AT ONCE! PLEASE REMAIN BEHIND WHITE LINES WHILE AUTONOMOUS SECURITY IS ACTIVE! REPEAT, REMAIN BEHIND WHITE LINE WHILE AUTONOMOUS SECURITY IS ACTIVE!"
Somewhere outside, Catnip thought she could hear the distinctive sounds of mass panic and the beep of something robotic coming to life.
-
Outside, the yard of the complex was a sudden explosion of confused horror. Pylons, metallic posts topped with a simple metal orb, rose from the ground at regular intervals. With a loud electric cough, this "fence" sprang to life. It was very fortunate that the event took place at midday, or the casualties would have been downright tragic. As it was, very few people were caught in the net of the installations security system. In the aftermath, it was discovered that only five people were killed directly by the system.
A worker running to get across the line of the fence struck the odd barrier at a full sprint and rebounded as though he'd run headlong into a brick wall. In the daze that followed, he hardly registered the turret rising from it's hiding place beneath a cleverly disguised port until it began firing on him. Another, a Misling woman, stoppedid sprint when the same turret spun on her lightning quick and emitted it's warning beep. Her hands shot up in the universal gesture of surrender and she shrieked for what felt like hours. When the turret did not fire on her, she stopped and looked. A few inches from where the poor woman had dropped to her knees, there was a broad white line. She had the feeling that if she crossed that line, so much as touched it even, she wouldn't have to worry about paying off her debts anymore. Somewhere on the other side of the facility, a bird flying above the complex was brought down in a hail of bullets.
The howling tower was now locked down, and there was little anyone on the outside could do about it.
"What happened!? Report!" Barked a guard caught outside the barrier. The strange wall of force didn't prevent communication it seemed, and this was the first good news since the whole place had gone into lockdown. Things like tools and whatnot could also be tossed over, but not weapons it seemed. It wasn't long before things had calmed down enough for people to start getting organized.
"As far as we can tell," said Felicia, scratching the back of her head, "someone tripped a failsafe in the places internal network. No one knew it was here, so it was basically inevitable. Wish we had known though. Most of the computers are either fried or on lockdown. Any word from Samson? We could really use his expertise right now."
The guard shook his head. Samsons absence was beginning to get worrying. No sign of him in his apartment, and the men who were watching for him had seen neither hide nor hair of him coming or going. It wasn't all bad though.
Felicia sighed, then asked, "Could you and your sec detail do something for us?"
-
Felicia thought about telling the shattered helm more about what had just happened, what she had gathered in the hour or so since things had calmed down. There would be time for it later though and she opted instead just to keep most of it to herself. It would only draw this out, and the foreman now thought that time was now short. Before her own work console was forcibly shut down, she had been reading about the facility itself. The goal behind this was to see if it had been built with a method for circumventing the ground water beneath Pricetown and as it turned out, there might have been. Beneath the lowest level of the facility was some kind of cistern made to catch water seeping in from the surrounding aquifer. At one end, was a pump that had once run continuously when the water reached a certain level. There was only one problem. Two, actually. The first was that someone had to man the pump station a mile outside Pricetown so that the pump stations foreign substance shut down wouldn't engage at the first sign of sand or screamers.. That in in itself wasn't so bad except that the area was known to be heavily irradiated. The pump station was designed to purify the water that passed through it, and it had done so with a radioactive element. The second problem was that no one knew if the pump was still operational. Felicia hadn't got to it's diagnostics reading before everything went to shit. It was the task she asked them that she bothered with. Go to the pump station, and keep it running at their end. Once it was open at this end, if it did open, everything would fall to them.
-
A few hours later, Felicia was giving the rundown on the situation as best she could over the din of the screamers below doing what they did best. It was very simple. The facility was damaged, and the damage was such that the primary systems regulating damage detection were offline. When the security system had been tripped, the secondary kicked in. The simple AI assumed that the facility was under attack and wouldn't let anyone get close until the damage was fixed.
"It's all back asswards." Felicia explained, "How the egg heads who designed this place expected to get people in here to fix it when it went wrong is a damn mystery."
"I suppose you could just walk through if you had the right clearance." George suggested. Felicia nodded, that was possible but if their we're people who had the clearance, they weren't here now. Catnip was beginning to get a headache from all the shrieking rising up from below and asked to be excused.
"Yeah, I think we could all do with a breather. We've got two workers watching that mess with those fancy noise canceling headphones on, we should be fine to see about a break. Not like anyone is gonna stop us, eh?" Felicia yelled over the noise.
A little later, the specialists were standing in the large concrete flat that made up the "yard" of the howling tower complex. Large and ugly concrete planters stood arranged symmetrically along the main walkway. The flowers had long ago given way to weeds or run to riot, tendrils spilling over the sides of their confines and dying in the high dry air of the Pricetown heat. Or in this time of year, the cold. Being cold was better than splitting your skull on the sounds coming from the building behind them, but it was still not pleasant. L shivered, as did Catnip. Misling coats did little to deflect the chill, and Catnip's own somewhat thicker pelt had yet to grow back fully.
To fill the time and distract themselves, they fell to talking, and it seemed everyone went to the things they loved the most. Felicia discussed her husband, a man who had "survived marriage to 'lecia and the Cataclysm at the same time." George talked about, or rather lectured about, building techniques of the Roman era. Catnip listened with rapt attention and since it seemed she was the only one who really cared, it was to her most of the lecture was directed at. L talked about gambling, at first hesitantly and then with growing fervor. The topic surprised some of them until someone brought up how L would look in a gamblers getup. Leila talked about puzzles. Like L, she started slow and picked up the pace. Before the cataclysm, the pharmacist had been possessed of a vast collection of the things. Anything from four peices to forty thousand. Flat or 3D. Some of them she'd even made herself with magazine cutouts glued to thin peices of sheet wood. Catnip of course, talked of the farm and her "family," then she took a turn none expected, but should have. Machines. Not robots, but machines. Cars, motors, mechanisms, engineering. Gas and smoke and steam. Internal combustion, radiation, and electrical theory. She spoke on the subject very matter of fact you, and with words and phrases that seemed to have both nothing and everything to do with her interests. Like an inexperienced zealot giving a sermon. More people joined in here there, those trapped with them. For a little while, people forgot the trouble of the day.
Catnip moved away from the group, not liking the close confines of the small crowd. On the outskirts of the group, she found Tenny fiddling with some kind of bracelet.
-
"watcha doin'?" Catnip asked curiously. Tenny hurried to hide the bracelet, but it slipped back down her arm. It was a short chain of some kind fitted with little dangling rings from which hung tiny figures. Tenny shuffled them around nervously and Catnip found it insteresting how all that loose metal didn't even clink.
"Nothing..." Tenny mumbled, "I should get back to work..." Tenny stood and without looking back, hurried off to the other end of the yard. Despite stating that she wanted to get back to work, she simply settled in and glanced at the others now and again while toying with her little bracelet. Even in her long coat, she shivered like someone wracked with sickness. Catnip wanted to go ask her what was wrong, insist that Tenny share with her. Catnip could be trusted, she wouldn't judge or make light of Tenny's... Whatever it was.
Felicia reached a hand out and took Catnip by the shoulder. "Don't mind her Nip. Tennyson's had a hard life after the Cataclysm. Lost her husband to screamers north of Reno. Poor woman. I suppose the noise those things make reminds her of that night."
Catnip noticed people silently nodding their understanding. They'd all lost someone. Several someone's in some cases. L wasnt moving at all, just staring after the small lady in the too large coat.
-
There wasn't a lot of sitting around after that day, people were too on edge after the first level of the underworks was drained. It was a time of excitement for some of them to be sure. The remaining workers were decided on the event really. Some couldn't care less and wanted nothing more than to be able to leave while others were excited by the progress. Progress meant a step closer to home and safety from the mycus. The uncovered level was little more than a crumbling walkway running around the edge of a large pool. Here and there, something oily and black could be seen trying to reach up and pull itself from the impenetrably dark depths of it's confinement.
"Walker, Parsons, Bannerman, with me. The rest of you stick with doc Kestrel. Let's see what we got." Felicia ordered. What they had was a series of important rooms, one of which contained the facilities backup generator. "It's been under water awhile. Ms. Walker, do you think you can fix it?"
Catnip gave it her "expert" examination, taking mental notes where necessary. It was a small electric model, not too different from some of those she'd passed up for use on the farm.
"I suppose." She said, wiping some more of the grime from the yellow plastic housing. It would need to be moved, since she couldn't work on it in that place. She said so and Tenny, surprisingly, backed her up by suggesting that the wiring down here would have to be rerun anyway. Once the details were worked out and a message run back up to the workers, Felecia called them together.
"I guess Patrick told you all the same thing and you've all had your own suspicions." She began, "some of the workers who were trapped with us have gone missing along with Samson's stand in. Patrick suggested a few things before he went AWOL."
George sniffed stiffly and added, "He seemed to believe there was a wolf among the sheep. You don't think our metaphorical wolf caught up with him, do you?"
"Maybe. But I'm of the opinion that he's most likely booked it halfway to Algol or Blue Haven by now after what he tried with... Er..." Felecia said, stumbling over the last bit. Catnip was too busy thinking about what Patrick had said and not what he'd done.
"So what you are saying," she said, clearing her throat a little, "Is there might be a killer inside with us?"
-
"So... There's a murderer trapped in here. With us." Tenny said in a hushed voice. Catnip could hear the nervous tension in the sound of her voice, she seemed to waver on the edge of something like panic. Felicia and George looked at each other, Felicia with worry and George with Stony faced placidity. Catnip decided to focus on George, mostly because his attitude lent her a measure of stability but also she found it a bit strange. The most stable individual she'd ever met was Floyd. Her metal cow man, bringer of the lead wind, and grandfather figure. He never flinched except on certain occasions, and he never blinked when he fired his guns. Even Hector and Nathaniel would blink.
"Calm down Ms. Parsons, so long as we stick together it should be fine. We need to discuss what we are going to tell the work force though." Felicia said. George straightened his glasses a little and sniffed.
"We should tell them the truth. There is someone among us who wishes us harm, everyone should stick together. Groups of no less than three or four." He suggested. It sounded reasonable to Catnip, and after a bit more discussion, it was what they chose to do at the meeting later that night.
"For now though," George went on, "perhaps we should see to the other room? A generator is all fine and good, but perhaps there is something we can use in the other?"
As it turned out, there was.
The group of specialists moved smartly to the other of the two or three exposed rooms, inching along the wet platform as they did so. The door itself was like any door, but they had seen a sign like this in the upper halls.
"WIND CELL STORAGE #2"
It said. George assessed the portal and gave his expert report. The door had buckled, but was otherwise structurally sound. The frame too had suffered some damage, but the rubber between the door and the frame had formed a seal.
"In my opinion," he stated, "I do believe it may be dry inside. If not, then there is a chance that we could get washed away into yonder screaming pit should the room beyond be inundated."
While they spoke, Catnip pressed an ear to the door. She found it hard to believe, but she thought for a moment that she heard something. She closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could, and... There it was. The sublime sound of some machine, a noise she associated with the spinning blade traps she'd never managed to get working safely. A continuous "whirr" that had always been followed by a discordant "sproink." Only in this case, the final exclaimation never came. It just whirred on and on, singing a song of perfectly lubricated and tuned gears, springs that never wore down, and engines that never coked or stopped.
"It's beautiful..." She whispered.
"H-hey girl?"
She was pulled from her ecstatic reverie by Felicia. Her manager looked concerned, and Catnip felt groggy and drugged.
"We gotta get in there..." She groaned. Felicia thought Catnip looked like a girl who'd gone on one hell of a roll in the hay with a particularly skilled lover. "It's so... Hey, you alright Tenny?"
Tenny had begun to look once again like a nervous bundle of squirrels stuffed into a house coat. She fidgeted with the little bracelet on her wrist. She looked like she'd been sucking on lemons.
"No. I don't want to be down here anymore. The... The screamers. I can't stand being this close..." She whined quietly.
"Alright," Felicia said, patting Tenny gently on the shoulder, "George, take her upstairs and come back with a couple laborers so we can get in here. I need to see this myself."
-
The door wouldn't give at first, prying was mostly impossible without some structural alteration taking place, but after an hour of ramming into the portal with a post driver it finally popped loose. There was no flood of water like they expected. No sudden rush of screamers or other beast that could have slipped in sometime between the destructive end of the facilities operation and now. What did meet them was light. Day light. The small room was the double of the wrecked one upstairs except for two major differences. First, this room was built with a narrow shaft leading at an angle up and out to the surface. The other was a set of plinths on one of which spun a grey cylinder. The walls were lined with them, each and every one of them lying still on racks. That's not to say that the room was not without damage. Several cylinders lay scattered and twisted in the corners, and the inside of the door showed why it had been so difficult to knock down. It had expanded. Not like a wood door soaking water, but like a sheet of metal heated and beaten to fill a mold.
"I say," George mouthed, " that is quite the sound."
"Yeah... How do we secure it?" Felicia mouthed back. Catnip staggered through the room, looking at all the cells. Broken, broken, broken. The more of them she examined, the more she found which had ruptured in some way. Only, the room hadn't been so badly damaged by the cells Sudden detonation. It seemed the only unbroken cell was the one still spinning on it's plinth. A cradle of sorts sporting a pair of pins which held the cell in place while it exerted itself. It was from this, the cell rubbing it's ends in infinite rotation against super alloy pegs, that the sound Catnip had heard came from.
"The others must have worn through their cradle or something..." Catnip suggested quietly. The one spinning cell was precisely what they needed. The emergency generator in the next room could, if Catnip got it up and running, finish the job of draining the towers main chamber and after that they would be home free. Simple. But not really. First, they had to get it off it's spindle and that was not just hard, but also dangerous. The cell spun fast enough and with enough force that any attempt to grab it would end up peeling the skin off any hand that was laid on it. This was sort of proven when Felicia attempted to prod the cell with a handy piece of aluminum shelving. It was bounced away hard enough to drive the strut into the concrete wall.
It was then that one of the workers hit on an idea. "Why don't we cut the spindle?"
-
The idea was very simple once it had been discussed. As it turned out, super alloy was fantastic for resisting heat, cold, bullets, energy discharge, explosions, and radiation but lousy when it came to abrasion. A hacksaw could do the job. It couldn't be done by hand though, and so the worker suggested something unorthodox. String and grit. "It might take awhile," He explained, "But it's totally doable. Run a thread or something around the base of the spindle, coated in something abrasive, and we could probably do it from a distance. Heck, we could even cut part way through that little peg to speed the process along."
With a little effort, Catnip rigged up a simple motor to move a loose thread coated in toothpaste around the weakened spindle and shut the broken door. If the idea worked and the spindle was cut like the worker said it would, they didn't need it flying out through the door and into the screamer filled abyss. Then, while they waited, they had a real meeting. Catnip volunteered to stay with the cell, along with a couple armed workers, to make sure no one interfered. The cell was a sign of hope, something they could use to get out, but whoever meant them harm probably wouldn't want that. It had to be protected. Besides, Catnip wanted to listen to it.
"I want to go home..." said one of the workers suddenly, "I don't mean, like, out of this place. I mean out of Pricetown. Out of Arizona. I want to go back to Wyoming, back before the Cataclysm..."
Catnip wanted to ask what it was like, she'd never seen the world before the cataclysm. Only it's remnants. Shambling not-people who stank and leaked a disgusting black goo and attacked on sight. Strange creatures that stalked the woods along with more mundane things, only they weren't strange. For Catnip, they'd always been there. She couldn't tell the alien from the native because for her, it was all native. In the end, she only listened. The workers who kept watch with her talked, and she listened. The world before sounded nice, but at the same time there was the feeling that it wasn't exactly fair or even pleasant. There was disparity between people. Whole groups of people fighting and hating each other because of one dumb sounding reason or another. Catnip couldn't imagine some of the reasons people from before fought and died, the ways they lived their lives. The mechanic didn't dare voice the opinion that, despite the decadence of the old world, the post cataclysm was better.
An hour went by, then two, three, four. Some of the workers keeping watch with her rotated out and new ones took their place. Catnip listened to their talk to pass the time. What would happen to them? What would happen to Pricetown? What would happen to the world? They didn't know, and after awhile Catnip began to doze. Then, just before midnight, a loud "ping" was heard and the racket of something crashing around the room. The door was hit and again blown off it's hinges. Catnip was awake instantly and leaping up to see what was going on, shining her flashlight into the room. At first, the workers couldn't find it. The cell had knocked down a shelf and stirred up all the other empty or damaged cells in the room but after a bit of digging around, they found it. One of the workers held up the cell and shook it to make sure it was the right one. It produced a rather heavy clunking noise.
"Fan-fucking-tastic boys and girls," He said, "We are one step closer to home."
That was when Catnip came up with another cell.
"Er... Where did that come from?" The worker asked.
"I think it was stuck behind the shelf..." Catnip said, examining the cell carefully. It's ports were open wider than those of the one that had until recently been bound to the spindle, and it's points of contact were badly worn. "It must have worn through it's pins and bounced back where we couldn't find it..." She added thoughtfully. "I suppose two is better than one, so long as the thing inside is still intact... I hope it's intact."
-
It was, but once Catnip discovered that, there was no chance she was going to let on that it was intact. She was sitting somewhat away from the rest, working and listening to the chatter around the barrel fires. The cell was whole, but that was all it was the one that had stayed on it's spindle had stayed clean and functional. The other one was gummed up with corrosion and so it's sleeves couldn't be adjusted. She labeled them "Cell one" and "Cell two" with the first being the better of the two. Cell one was given a fresh application of lubricant, sprayed through a straw from a can, and put away in Catnip's work bag. Cell two though was worked on diligently. From another can Catnip brought out another solution she had learned about since coming to Pricetown. "Rust cutter." It smelled like gasoline but could dissolve rust like no one's business while doubling as a lubricant. It wasn't much good for tools or knives, Catnip could polish those things by hand, but it was fantastic for small moving parts and it too had a small narrow straw for application in tight spaces. She squirted a little of the rust cutter onto the rim of the cells cap and jiggled the handle a little. There was a bit of give in it, and that was good. A little give meant the fluid was working. The more it worked, the deeper it could permeate into every crack of the corroded metal.
"How's it going over there Ma'am?" One of the workers asked. The conversation went quiet at the question, everyone listening.
"It's fine. Just a bit stiff." Catnip said. They waited for a bit, perhaps waiting for Catnip to elucidate on what exactly she was up to, but she didn't. She just continued tooling away, so one of the workers brought out a guitar and gave it a tentative strum. The mechanic shivered at the sound. Kathrine played the guitar, on occasion she'd even do it while Catnip was working. There was a soothing nostalgia about the sound. Something warm and lonely at the same time. The guitarist plunked at the strings and tuned up, then went into something low and slow. Catnip knew the song too. "The streets of Le Cordon Rouge." A downbeat meandering song that Kathrine played often but never sang. Catnip was suddenly sad. The song always made her feel a bit sad and her work slowed. Sadness turned to determination, she would escape. After all this business with the tower, Catnip would just leave. Just walk out at night and leave Pricetown. Leave the sand and the people, the Mycus and the screamers. Pricetown stupid money and... Catnip's hand touched the collar around her neck as she moved to scratch. She was so used to it now that Catnip often forgot she was wearing it, and the fact that she was used to it turned her determination back into dispair. It could let Pricetown's authority track her down. Make it easy to catch her too.
"Bah..." She spat. A little more rust cutter, and a bit more half hearted jiggling. There was definitely something in there. The cannisters just didn't want to give it up, so Catnip set it aside and let the rust cutter work. The guitar changed hands and the song changed while Catnip looked up into the night sky. There wasn't a single cloud up there but not a star could be seen. Catnip realized she'd never seen it so dark before. How long had it been since she'd seen the stars? Her arrival, she decided. Waking up in the back of a white truck, staring up at the wonder of the desert sky. Since then life had become complicated. Unbearably so. She slid the cannisters back into her lap and went back to work. The handle on the end slid stiffly this time, but at least it turned. A half turn to the right, then a tug, and another quarter turn. The sound the cannister made when it finally opened was a far cry from the grinding of rust on rust, a little "foomp" sound. She reached in and took out the source of the cells power.
"Oh." She said, almost whispered. Catnip had expected something interesting, but not quiet as interesting as the truth of the cells "core." A spiraling pink stone in the shape of the a tear drop and covered here and there in little spiraling divots. Catnip had seen one before, but only in a dream. As inexplicable and sudden as coming into ones own home and finding friends and family leaping out of the closet to surprise, Catnip found herself in possession of the stone she'd been seeking for most of her life outside the lab.
-
"Oh? You get that thing foxed ma'am?" Asked someone from around the fire. In her sudden exaltation, she'd forgotten momentarily where she was. Catnip couldn't, wouldn't, put the stone back. She'd searched so long and had others searching so long. The fact of her displacement didn't matter, she had it. She finally had it in her grasp and now... She understood. The train would run off the stone as a wind cell. It would provide unlimited power to her Magnum opus. In her hands she held the solution to the world's power problems and also the key to total annihilation. A vortex stone. Catnip gulped hard and in one smooth unsuspicious movement, dropped the stone down her shirt where it sat cool between her breasts. She gave her shirt, and the bra under it a little tug to loosen them a little in the same motion. It wouldn't stay there long, Catnip would move the stone to her bag or a pocket very soon but she had to act natural first.
"It's empty..." She said with the practiced solemnity she saved for lying to Pricetown's merchants or to Pinkies enforcers when they came looking for swiped property.
"Ah? Oh. I thought you said there was something in it though?" Asked one of the people gathered around. Catnip turned, cannister in hand and as she did so, syrupticiously dropped a scrap of metal into it. The move was practically perfect and when she handed it over the people were not at all surprised when the chunk of twisted steel dropped out of it. "Huh, well. At least there's one, right?"
"Yeah... I just hope it works." On the outside, Catnip was cold and calm, but inside her heart was doing backflips and pull ups. She wanted to jump and shout in the primal way she and her siblings had in moments of extreme triumph, but held the compulsion in. It became harder to do that though when she realized she could use the stone to return home as well.
"What's that smile for? Even with one, we are still trapped in here. I hope to God we won't need the second."
Catnip hadn't felt the smile rising to her lips and as soon as it was mentioned, it dropped. Her tools were put away, the stone was slipped down the front of her shirt and into a pouch on the front of her belt, and she moved closer to the fire. The flames danced and sparked, flickering here and there, casting shadows like dancers on the sides of the sawn off oil drum. The guitar changed hands and the song changed again. Catnip began to doze, listening to the fire and the guitar and the long low wail of the wind. Strange, that last. Her eyes snapped open and the guitar came to a discordant jangle as the gathered people realized, someone was screaming. Catnip didn't see who said the last words she would remember from that night, but she would remember them long after she'd kicked the dust of Pricetown from her heels.
"Jesus fuck, she's burning..."
-
Liela Kestrel burned, and it was difficult to imagine how. By the time extinguishers had been found and used, she was already gone. Felicia and a man representing the shattered helm met in the infirmary where Liela had been, against Felecia's order, alone. But that wasn't right, not exactly. She hadn't been alone. If she had been, there wouldn't be such a mess. It seemed obvious that the carnage was the result of a struggle. With who though? The table in the infermary had been toppled along with the pile of empty plastic bags that had been laying on it, those that hadn't melted that was. The room stank of burning flesh, burnt feathers, and chlorine. What worried Felecia most though was the cabinet. To the left of the infermaries voluminous sink was a tall medical cabinet which had been kept locked at all times save for the key kept by Leila and the spare kept by Felecia. It was locked. That was perfectly normal except that if it was locked, then what were all the bags doing out? They had contained the work crews supply of antifungal powder, grains of precious Mycus killing medicine, chalky yet sand like. The guard, Darby, had discovered where the powder had gone. A chalky residue had been left caked in thin streamers down to the drain.
"Why Darby? Why would she wash it all down the drain?" Felecia asked, certain that this new horror would send the workers over the edge if they found out.
"I don't know miss, but I'm willing to bet she had a very good reason. Something wrong with it maybe? Or..." Darby trailed off.
"Or what?"
"Or maybe... Someone else did it?"
Silence fell between them as the disaster that was the infermary suddenly took on a more grim implication. The table, broken as a woman and... Someone, tumbled onto it. The cracked mirror, as though it had been struck by the small globe lying broken on the floor along with the broken medical equipment swept from it's neat organization upon the countertop. Despite the signs of struggle though, it didn't make sense that Leila had been set on fire. Why do that when simply killing her almost any other way would have drawn less immediate attention? The question it turned out, would be answered from outside the security line and in short order.
"She didn't lend out the key did she? She knew better than that right?" Felecia asked. Darby shook his head, then frowned.
"Key wasn't on her body miss. I suppose she could have dropped it, or it was taken after, but I don't think so." He mumbled thoughtfully. His radio crackled, startling them both. "Aye, she's here. What? Jesus, alright I'll let her know." He put the radio away and looked the foreman dead in the eyes. "The shattered helm found Samson."
Catnip sat in the auditorium under watch along with everyone else by the improvised guards that had been assigned after the Leila's dramatic death. They were waiting now for news. The foreman had ordered everyone to the auditorium to await further instruction while she spoke with some men from the shattered helm and searing spear. In the meantime, she found herself seated with Tenny. The small woman was toying with a little chain on her wrist, fussing and worrying over it. The little bracelet was covered in all sorts of little objects and Catnip had a hard time telling herself that it did not tickle her fancy. In fact she thought it just the sort of thing Kathrine might enjoy.
"Hello uh... Tenny. Whatcha doin?" She asked freindily. Tenny started and stuffed her hand in her pocket before Catnip could get more than two words in and glanced wildly around the auditorium. Before Catnip had decided to try and open up, she'd seen something in Tenny. In the way the woman had examined her bracelet. Vacant, hollow, fear. The terror of recollection which the Misling woman on Catnip's other side had stared out the window of an old dealership with, reliving dark memories. Quinn would have told her that the look was a Hallmark of a little thing called "trauma." He himself could have told her all about the in's and outs of trauma, but he wasn't here. Quinn was in New England, far away from this terrible place.
"N-nothing. I don't want to..." She began, trailing off into unintelligible mumbling at the end. To Catnip, it sounded like she had a mouthful of cotton. L gave her a gentle nudge with her elbow and a small admonishion to leave the poor lady alone, but Catnip persisted.
"What's that? That chain thingy?" She pressed. Tenny shied away uncomfortably and Catnip began to lose hope that she would ever speak with her, when she did.
"It... It's a charm bracelet... You d-dont know what a charm bracelet is?" She withdrew her hand and showed it off tentatively, drawing back when Catnip reached out to touch it. Little dancing animals and tiny bells dangled from tiny loops on the chain, each one representative of a significant event in the wearers life or of some characteristic. Catnip later learned the general meaning of charm bracelets later when things had calmed down. For now, all she wanted to do was look at it. L gave it more than a passing glance, remembering one she'd kept as a child. Lost, that bracelet, for years now. She'd given it to her husband in leiu of a wedding ring when... L shuddered and pushed the memories away. As pleasant as they would be, they would only lead her back into the dark. She did more than shudder, L flinched. The bracelet was just too much for her. Memories of a basement in the countryside and the smell of rot and the sound of...
Tenny was staring at her. "You know too, don't you? What... What it's like?" L's lips became a thing frowning line on her elongated snout and she tensed visibly. "To lose them all... And not be able to do anything about it? To... To listen to their screams and-"
"Shut the fuck up..." L growled. Catnip was shocked. L often shifted between meek and brash, but never outright hostile. Not until now. She realized it too. "Sorry Nip, but I'm going to go sit over there... I don't need to hear anymore of this..." L finished before storming off. Catnip watched her go feeling confused and conflicted. L was hurting now and it was all so sudden, she wanted to go to her and see if she could make it better. At the same time though, L was partly responsible for Catnip being here and Catnip wanted her to hurt a bit. The vindictive feeling was strong, but unnecessary. Hurtful to herself even. Catnip felt tired, and decided she would go after L. Tenny seemed to have descended back into her own dark memory, and out of her reach for the time being.
"Alright everyone, have a seat, I've got news. A little good, a lot of bad, and I don't think we can afford to play our hands close to the vest anymore. A couple hours ago, just before Leila's death, the shattered helm went to check out our computer specialists home again to see if he'd come back. All I can really say is, they found him. Or something that looked like him..." Felecia let it sink in, the idea that who or what was found at Samson's home might not have been him at all but rather something pretending to be him. "They tell me it didn't take long to figure out, the real Samson had those ear plugs things and the... The copycat or whatever, didn't. When it thought it was alone, it tried to attack someone as well. Some kind of new Mycus monster... They shot him, it, and it started to change. Sprouting tendrils and spouting spores. So they burned it. Sounds bad, I know, but that isn't even the bad news. The bad news is that when we take all the evidence into consideration, Darby here and I believe there may be a similar creature among us."
That got them going, the auditorium exploded with shouted questions and exclamations. Somewhere in the back rows, someone had just passed out. Not just a murderer in their midst, but some shapeshifting Mycus horror, it could be any one of them. Felecia heard it, and immediatly went into damage control.
"No no! Calm down folks, calm down, panic can be more deadly than you think, just listen God damnit." She shouted into the din. It took a long few moments in which she thought the whole gathering would start stampeding for the doors, but it never happened and things calmed somewhat. That was good, but not perfect. Felecia waited for them to really settle down and noticed something she should have seen right away. There were less of them now. Less people in the auditorium now than there had been last time. Had they found a way out? If so, then why hadn't they come back to tell those trapped inside about it? If not, then where were they? A thin fog of unease dropped over her, with a touch of the paranoia she was beginning to develop tinting it. If one of them... No, if ALL of them were infected, how would she know? Administering antifungus would have done it, but there wasn't any left anymore. It had been washed down the infermary drain, and Felecia had an inkling that told her Leila hadn't been the one to do it. Leila had simply walked in on it happening. She could almost see it in her minds eye, she forgets her key to the cabinet or maybe loses it, goes back to the infermary alone to look for it and finds... Someone, dumping it into the sink. It was falling into place in her mind now, sure. She tries to stop whoever it is, realizes just what's she's up against, maybe gets bit or infected somehow. It made perfect sense, then...
"Whoever she's fighting with escapes and she sets herself on fire before she can succumb to the Mycus..." Felecia mumbled, "So she won't leave an infected body behind..."
"Um, ma'am?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry about that. Just thinking. What did you say?" She said hastily, realizing she'd spaced out for a moment there.
"I asked, should we pass out fungus medicine?"
-
"There was no antifungal medicine." she explained. The gathered workers didn't like that, as was expected, but they didn't riot. They got rowdy for sure, but they didn't lose their minds over it and they calmed quickly. Somewhere in the front row, Catnip gripped L's arm gently but firmly. The tall Misling had gone stiff at the proclaimation that there was no medicine to be had. Felecia was going over why up on stage, giving the facts and some of her theories as to what was going on. "One thing I think we can be sure of folks; I don't think this Mycus thing is immitating us. Not all of us anyway. Look around you. I've been thinking on it, standing up here and looking out at y'all. You know what I see? I... I don't want to panic y'all... And maybe you've already noticed, but there are faces that should be in this crowd that just aren't anymore. There are less of us in here than there were yesterday. It doesn't rule out that more then one of us isn't exactly what they seem, but whoever it is isn't exactly going out of it's way to mimic everyone."
"So... What can we do about it?" Someone asked. Fortunately, Felecia had an answer.
"Same thing we been doing; working and sticking together. Except now I think everyone needs to group up. Harder to go after any one person if they are in a group I think, four or five per should be fine. Stick with your group, and don't separate from them unless you absolutely must. Mr. Bannerman and Ms. Walker are going to be working on getting the emergency generator and the tower moving. Ms. Partridge, make sure the wiring is up to snuff. We don't want any of it blowing if there's a short in the lines somewhere. As for myself, I'm going to look into Ms. Kestrels death a bit more. There's something about it I don't like, and I intend to find out what."
-
They'd been told to keep in groups before, and it seemingly hadn't helped. Now the work was done in larger groups and while the safety such a plan provided was in question among some of them, the efficacy of it was undisputed. George and Catnip worked at a fever pitch, patching walls and tuning equipment. The electric generator brought up from the depths had suffered greatly from years spent submerged in standing water, and the coils of it's simple but effective motor had been corroded to uselessness. To that end, L was put on "winding duty." Catnip's term for the task of carefully unspooling the corroded copper wire and respooling a fresh length about the motors shaft. The generators starter was also an issue, but Catnip had that issue well in hand herself. It was more busywork for her than anything else. To the others though, it was something to watch. Catnip's crude improvised professionalism drew attention from the workers and assistants who came and went in there little groups.
After the big meeting, everyone had stayed in the auditorium and slept in shifts, keeping a close eye on each other. When the day came, and a cold but sunny sky with it, the fears of the night before burned away. Day also brought renewed vigor to the work crew and plans were laid out. Tenny would complete work on the wiring with prefab lines she herself had assembled over the course of the week while George would direct reinforcement of existing structures. Catnip would work on the electric generator, and Felecia would investigate into the strange death of the work crews only doctor.
"Could you cut the humming Miss?" Tenny asked tentatively from the railing across the large egg shaped chamber beneath the tower. Daylight streamed into the room in an oddly copious manner from the sole hole in the roof high above, and it warmed Catnip's bare scarred skin in a most pleasing manner. What she wouldn't give to have Kathrine rubbing that sunshine into her arms, and it was that thought that had Catnip humming. She had a vortex stone, safely tucked away in her tool pouch, and it seemed now that home was just a hop, a skip, and a longish jump away. And so, she hummed. Her singing was certainly something to wince at, but her humming... Kathrine had often found herself just sitting and listening to the steady lilting drone of Catnip's hum. Floyd had also done this on occasion, calling it Catnip's "inventors song" while her sister thought of it as Catnip's special magic song. It was calming, and it was probably this that brought the crews back to her while she worked throughout the day.
"Hm?" Catnip said groggily, the sun always did it to her. She could lay out under the sun for hours if she didn't have so much work to do. "Oh, humming. Humming?"
Another thing was that Catnip didn't know she was doing it. It just resonated out from the back of her throat most of the time, but she didn't really notice a note of it. She stopped for all of two minutes, and without knowing it she was off again. Deep in her work and humming the music of invention.
"Ugh..." Tenny groaned, "How inconsiderate. I can't stand that noise! Please, stop it. Some people's children, I swear..."
People were giving the electrician looks after that, little glances of distaste that Catnip felt the poor woman had done little to deserve. Instead of keeping silent and risking humming again, Catnip decided to talk instead and that didn't go over as well as she thought it would. The first thing that came to mind was a story about her knight in a modern time, Hector. Catnip got as far as, "My friend Hector is a knight and I helped him make his tank better." Before Tenny made a sound of irritable disgust and stormed out. Catnip watched her go, feeling confused but L only felt contempt.
"Go on Nip, I for one would like to hear more about New England and your family." L urged. She was unable to keep a little of the scorn out of it, and Catnip hesitated. Still, she talked a little hesitantly at first and then picked up the pace when she was sure no one else was going to storm out on her. She got part of the way through the rescue of her sister, when word came that the shattered helm was taking requests for supplies out by the barrier.
-
Catnip sent L for wire and continued her work. She didn't really need the wire, but she did want to get L out of the way for a bit. A bit of time to herself to think things over and plan. There was the instructions about not being alone to worry about, but Catnip wasn't worried. There were plenty of people coming in and out to run errands or get direction that she wasn't too concerned. The sun moved across the sky and cast it's semi circle of light into the egg shaped rotunda, moving the spotlight thus created slowly until it had changed to a dull orange and settled warmth onto her bare leg. Catnip closed her eyes and let her mind wander. Just a bit of comfort in her life, the warm early evening sun reminding her of Kathrine's tail draped over her lap like a bundle of divine fluff. It made Catnip's heart ache for home. With the stone in her bag though, she had a balm for that ache. A reminder that home was closer than ever, and that all she needed to do was make a move to get back.
A cold gust brought her back around. Somehow, time had passed faster than she thought. Was it possible that she'd dozed off? Of course it was, the sun always made her feel drowzy. How long? Not asleep, but alone. How long had she been alone? If someone had been by, they would have woken her and brought her around to her work. Silence. Too much silence. Not even the sound of wind over the main shaft hole in the ceiling. All at once, the mixed smells of rotten wood, filth, and the low sour aroma of mold seemed to fill the room. Catnip hopped to her feet and gave the emergency generator a once over. She and L had poured over it all day, and all the remained was to slide the alternator housing into place and snap the clips down. Somewhere across the chamber, something shifted horribly. To Catnip, it's movements sounded a bit like the rustling of old pages or the sound of dried dead skin rubbing against more dead skin. It had come for her, and if the breeze hadn't stirred her, it would have fallen upon her as she dozed. The housing clicked into place and Catnip slapped it's clips into place before spinning on her heels and bolting from the darkened room.
"L! George! Tenny!" She screamed, flying down the curved hall with all the speed she could muster. It was the same feeling, the feeling of being harried by something in the dark under Kings Court. Catnip was thankful that this time there was no voice pounding it's way into her consciousness and forcing it's way into her thoughts. Light ahead, spot lights and camp fires and the murmur of many voices. Catnip burst from the facility like a storm and bolted across the grounds towards the spotlights, towards the painted line marking the firing line.
Someone grabbed her by the arm while another caught her by the waist. Catnip shrieked and struggled, wanting desperately to get to the spotlights, get to safety. Then she realized who it was that grabbed her. L and another Misling. The turrets had already painted her with their little targeting lasers, little red points picking out points on her chest and midriff ready to put so many holes should she cross the line. L and young misling had snagged her inches from crossing over the point of no return.
"W-what's going on?" Catnip asked, "I thought you went to get wire?" L looked at her gravely and reached into her own bag for the wire she'd procured just before everything had gone wrong yet again. Catnip saw it on her face, was suddenly aware of some great uneasiness among those around her. "What happened?"
L worked her muzzle nervously, then said slowly, "Felecia's disappeared... Probably... Dead... They found her coveralls shredded up down near the pit..."
"Nobody heard a thing..." George said. He pushed his way through the crowd and said, "The screamers would have sounded off if she'd fallen in."
"So..." Catnip said tentatively, still shocked from her close encounter, her close shave, and now the latest in bleak news.
"So somebody has done a sloppy job of covering up." Someone finished, "Who's in charge now?"
"George, Catnip, and Ms. Parsons..." L explained, "What's left to do?"
George had finished the last of his fortification earlier that afternoon, he explained, and before she'd vanished Felicia had claimed that she thought she knew what had happened in the infirmary. He also had it from Tenny herself that the wiring work was basically finished. That only left Catnip's portion.
"It's done." She said, "Just prime it and start it and we can start pumping the water out. Then I can put the cell in and start the upper rotor." She didn't tell them about what she'd seen upon waking. That thing sliding around in the wind chamber, reaching out to infect and choke the life from her. The horror of it still stuck with her, but something else seemed to strike her as odd about the memory. Something important, a small but vital detail. It had moved around like a pile of rags, but there had been another detail she couldn't quite put her finger on. When Catnip tried to seek it out, her mind would shy away from it.
"We are set then. Hopefully Felecia turns up, but..." George said, trailing off at the end. He didn't have to say it. That if Felecia did turn up, there wasn't much hope of her being in any condition to lead them anymore.
-
"Why were you screaming and carrying on?" Someone asked suddenly, Catnip saw that it was Tenny weaving through the workers. Catnip had somehow forgotten what had just happened to her. What she'd seen in the Howling towers rotunda. They were all looking at her now curiously and somewhat fearful. The mechanic saw something then, in her mind, an image of what things looked like to them. She, running and screaming from the rotunda like hell was at her heels all the while the foreman had just gone missing. If Catnip had been running, maybe she'd seen the foreman. If so though, then why act like she hadn't known Felicia was missing? As the idea came to her, it seemed that it was formulating in their minds as well.
"There was a monster in the wind room. Why did you leave me alone?" Catnip asked. Tenny frowned deeply.
"You were alone?" Tenny said suspiciously. Catnip realized her mistake but didn't know what to say about it. Yes she'd been alone, but that didn't mean...
"Yeah?" L said sharply. Catnip thought at first L was angry at her, but quickly came to understand that the tall misling was getting defensive of her. "I left her alone because she asked me to get wire from the people tossing supplies over the barrier. I thought she'd be fine since so many people were coming and going to see her. Everyone but you, Parsons. I know what your next insinuation is gonna be, and maybe we should ask where you were? You spend an awful lot of time alone yourself!"
"Everybody just calm the hell down!" George interrupted with a shout. It was plain to see that he was afraid, but there was something else. He didn't trust any of them, Catnip could see it. Everyone could see it. Then, no one could trust anyone. It was as it had been when Felicia had revealed to them the current situation and her fears. Tenny gave him a vile sideways look riddled with scorn and distrust.
"And what about you? I've seen how you hang around with these two... RATS!?" She hissed. L stepped forward and slapped her hard enough to send the woman sprawling and smashing the wire frames of her glasses out of shape. "You... You hit me?"
"Yeah, and I'll do it again too. I'd beat the heck out of you except we have bigger things to worry about than this bickering and your... ridiculous insinuations!" L growled at the prone woman. She had the appearance of a person who'd been caught assaulting someone, but didn't know they'd been seen yet, standing over her victim. "Catnip, will the generator run?"
"Y-yes... I just need to test it to make sure the power is steady and then we can-"
"Skip the tests, the pump isn't going to overload it. I'll stay with you, even if the rest of these people won't. We can watch it over night while it pumps off the water."
While L took charge, no one noticed Tenny pick herself up and crawl away. No one that was, but Catnip. After a little bit, everyone went off into their own groups for the night leaving Catnip and L all to themselves. They talked for a bit, L getting the details of what had happened and beginning to show real fear, now that the adrenaline of her actions was wearing off. Catnip's encounter frankly terrified her, but she owed Catnip a bit of trust. Before they left, Catnip stooped and picked something up.
"What's up nip?" L asked. Catnip didn't answer. Instead, she held up what she'd found. A small chain covered in little icons and bells with a broken clasp.
-
The small generator chugged painfully, but worked the pump as fast as it would go as effectively as it should have. When day finally broke the two of them were exhausted, having spent the entire uneventful night watching over the equipment in shifts. Only, they didn't get any sleep. The night moved on and on, the silence of the facility deepening into something menacing. Even the sounds of the city beyond the pre-cataclysm defense network died down to a sleepy quietness. All the same, it was impossible to get more than a few minutes of sleep without bolting back into the world of the wakeful with a start. In the morning, Catnip and L were exhausted.
So they didn't notice at first when someone slipped in and stood around awkwardly waiting for them to see him. Catnip started violently when she finally did notice George looking over the railing.
"We've got a new problem Ms. Walker." He said solemnly, "The other generator is gone."
Catnip blinked blearily, rubbed her eyes, then tried to slap herself awake. It had been awhile since she'd heard the rumble of the other much louder generator. Catnip was so used to the background noise by now that it's absence should have struck her right away.
"Oh. Well, do you think we can fix it?" She asked, shaking L a little.
"It's gone Catnip." George reiterated, emphasizing the word 'gone.' It didn't seem to register. Couldn't register in Catnip's foggy brain. "We can't find Tenny either. How much longer is this going to take?" Catnip wandered over to the railing and looked down. The water level had dropped low enough that Catnip could now see the cradle and series of machines designed for accepting and utilizing the wind cells power of rotation. A simple mount like the one that had held the cell in the first place and a series of gears and motors. In a just a little bit, she estimated, she could get down there and start work on cleaning up the works and getting the cell in place. Then all that had to be done was to climb the tower and engage the drive shaft. An hour. An hour at least, two at most. Her bag found it's way onto her shoulder and when she looked, L was there looking haggard and worn out.
"We're in the home stretch now." Catnip said. She reached into her bag and wrapped a hand around the stone hidden there, grinning imperceptibly at the unintended double meaning. "An hour or two and this thing will be running again."
-
Time. Time was getting thin now, scarcer. Catnip had grabbed everything she needed and worked at a breakneck pace, cleaning and fixing. Loosening stuck gears and bolts, oiling the machine. The pump worked and over the hour she felt the water recede from thigh level to just below her knees. If there were shreikers lurking just beneath the waters surface, it was ages too late to worry about it now. From above, George and L watched over her patiently and with a growing tension. Besides the noise of the relatively quiet electric generator, they had marked the odd silence that had fallen over everything with trepidation. If it was down to the three of them, then it would be obvious to Catnip and L who the threat was. It wasn't though, and shortly before Catnip finished her repairs and slammed the wind cell into it's cradle, three other workers arrived looking for tasks. She heard George ask them where the others were at, but didn't catch the answer over the burst of air that erupted from the machine, and the thing that was rattled off the top of the debris shield above the bulk of the machinery.
At first, Catnip believed it to be a tiny screw. It wasn't though, in fact, it looked a bit like one of the charms from Tenny's bracelet. She pulled the chain of bells and icons from the pouch where it had been stashed, and yes there were a few small links on which there hung nothing. 'How...' Catnip mused, then shot a glance up. There was something odd about it, but there was a blank in her mind. How had it got here? Tenny hadn't been down into this part of the rotunda, and she certainly hadn't gone near the machinery. The hole in the ceiling then? That was a long shot, and Catnip had never seen Tenny so much as set foot on the stairs going up to the roof. So then...
"You did it Nip! You did it! What happens next!?" L cried, breaking her out of her thoughts and back into the real world. The workers who'd come in stepped back in awe of the machine. Already the drive shaft of the howling tower spun like a dervish out of control and rattled it's bearings back to life. The Gale within the room was entirely unexpected, but already it was slowing to a more gentle but still brisk cyclone. What little water was left was being whipped up out of the basin now and being thrown against the walls in sousing fans. Deep beneath, the shriekers that still remained gave a long ear piercing wail that went completely unnoticed.
"The-oh-It needs to wind up a bit," Catnip explained loudly shouting to be heard over the machine, "if we're lucky, it'll produce enough excess power to restart the facility and we can shut down the security grid." Catnip climbed back onto the walkway and rubbed at the grimy water clinging to her peach fuzz fur with a rough towel. "All we have to do is restart the buildings systems." She finished, and George added, "which we should be able to do from the console's here in this very room."
"Well what are we waiting for? How long does it take to warm up?" L asked or rather, demanded, furtively. Catnip stayed silent for a long moment listening. Her ears twitched attentively to the roll of the bearings in the driveshaft, the rough grind that evened out to a steady roaring hum as rust was worked out and lubricant spread itself out over moving parts.
"Now." She said. George took to one of the console's and set to work. In short order, the lights came back on around the facility and for a moment, the intercoms crackled to life.
Then, everything went dark.
-
The entire facility simply shut down, save for the spinning shaft, and the air filled instantly with the smell of ozone and burning wire. A monitor blew and the cyclone in the chamber filled with flying glass, threatening to flay the rooms occupants until it had been ground out of existence by contact with the walls. George and L stumbled to the ground, throwing themselves haphazardly down to keep from being shredded while Catnip sprinted to the other side of the egg shaped room with one of the workers in tow. She'd need his help to pry the hatch and pull fuses.
"Overload! It's overloading!" She shouted. It was one of the first lessons she'd learned when working with automotive electronics. If there was too much stress on the system, a powerful motor would burn out everything it was connected to. The facility couldn't take it. Catnip knew that was absurd, it should be unlikely. The facility was built to take it's power from the tower itself. A doubt set in, but Catnip knew it had been there the whole time.
A short while later, George tapped away at one of the intact monitors and squinted at the screen while L dabbed at the blood welling up from a cut in his forehead. "I think it's stabilized, but Ms. Walker, I don't think it's going to be able to power the dish." He said, settling a bit on his feet. "The dish isn't routed into the tower itself to prevent a burn out, at least that's how it looks."
"So we'll have to climb the tower and restart it manually." Catnip said, connecting the dots.
"Nip," L said fearfully, "How are you going to do that? You heard him, the dish isn't routed to the tower."
"She's right." George put in, taking the small towel from L now that the blood flow had stopped, "The surge knocked out the security too. We could just-"
"NO!" Catnip shouted, more serious than she'd ever been before. "We can't do that. It's an option, but we can't do that. If we leave now, the tower will never restart. That thing trapped here with us will just leave. It'll get out into Pricetown and spread. Besides, I think I know who it is." L's eyes widened and she leaned in closer.
"You do?! Who Nip?"
"I've been thinking about it, and this short proves it I think." Catnip explained. She had an image in her head of Tobin plummeting to the ground, and the figure falling with him. They hit, but the other is made of sturdier stuff than the cyborg and simply rolls away and scuttles off into the dark. Despite appearances at the time, it had left a clue. The facility should have been able to take the power provided, even suffer a few blowouts in some areas, but such a wide spread blackout should not have been in the cards. Unless someone had tampered with the wiring. Catnip held up, in the palm of her hand, a tiny charm in the shape of a mouse.
"It came off her bracelet when Tenny landed on it after she fell off the tower with Tobin." Catnip said, "And it either got caught in her clothes or kicked or somehow ended up getting thrown into that hole up there. I found it when the rotor started and shook it off the debris shield."
"Catnip, if you'll pardon my language, that's bullshit." George said angrily. "How could you even... insinuate..."
"Because Tenny was the only one working on wiring, and she did it mostly alone. Think about it George. Moving around all alone, disliking humming and high pitched sounds."
"No. I refuse. Ms. Partridge has an atavism related to the loss of her husband to shriekers!" George insisted hotly. Catnip didn't understand. Not Georges refusal and not his anger. The evidence was there, enough of it anyway, and she just didn't get it.
"Refuse all you want," L said bitterly, "But she's right. Even if she didn't kill Tobin and the others, she's still the only one who could mess with the electrical systems in this place besides Catnip, and Catnip didn't leave anybodies sight once."
"You're just saying that because you hate her..." George pushed. L sneered unpleasantly, she wanted to shout at the man but instead crushed that desire back and tried reason.
"I don't hate her." L hissed, "I can empathize with her, but what she's done isn't an excuse."
"How could you possibly-"
"My husband is dead!" L shouted at him, exploding instnatly, "My children are dead! I want everyday to see them again, but I can't! If I hate Tenny, then it's only for what she's doing here. Sabotage! This tower is the best way to keep the mycus away from Pricetown and she's trying to keep it from being fixed. I... I can still hear them sometimes..." L's eyes had gone wide again, wide and haunted. Remembering what it had been like to sit in the cellar eating a handful of dogfood and being forced to listen as a monster used her childs voice to try and coax her out where it could get to her. The Mycus was tricky and evil. No vile tactic too low for the fungal invaders to use. What L was seeing now was such a thing happening again here in Pricetown. The Mycus horror spreading throughout the town and forcing people to starve while they listened to their former friends and family pounding on their doors or windows, making dark promises and dire threats. Begging to be let in. "We have to restart the tower... C-Catnip, what do we do?"
-
"We stick with our original plan and climb." Catnip said, "Well no. You and these guys climb. George and I can stay down here to keep the towers power output stable and prepare it to lock with the dish. We need the dish going at the same speed as the main rotor down here so they can lock together on the move. I need you to take the generator we have up to the top of the tower and hook it into the main breaker box. You might have to do some prying and unplugging and fuse swapping though, but I know you can do it. Just make sure the tower isn't still connected to the facility up there before you connect it all up or your fry yourself, okay?"
"Okay!" L said with a new determination. While she and the three workers gathered up the generator and tools they'd need, Catnip turned to George and they got to talking again. He still didn't believe, but that wasn't important. It was the look of suspicion he gave her that was. He leaned against the rail that ran around the edge of the walkway and watched L and the others go.
"So." He said, "What happens now? You show your true form and attack me now that we are alone?"
Catnip tensed and hissed back, "I could say the same for you. Remember, I fixed the tower and started it going..."
"And blew out the power." George asserted.
"Even if I had done it, it also took out the security wall. People are probably leaving already." Catnip pushed.
"Which was probably the plan." He pushed back. Catnip threw up her hands, quite sure now that she was growing to deeply dislike the man. Catnip had never been treated so much like an untrustworthy villain before.
"Whatever. If that's the plan, then why are you still here? You could probably leave too, but you aren't. So why are you still here then?" She asked. George cocked his head at her. He didn't think Tenny was in on it, but he wasn't really certain Catnip was either. He wanted to believe that it was all some massive mistake they were making and that neither Tenny nor Catnip was a doppleganger. The stress of the last few days was now plain to see, he couldn't hide it and keep calm at the same time. Instead, he simply asked a question.
"What if one of us is the doppleganger?"
"Even if we were, I don't think either of us is in any condition to do anything about it." She said, feeling very tired.
"So I'll ask again," George insisted, "what happens now?"
"Why don't we just... Wait awhile and see?"
L looked out over the vista that was the great American desert with a renewed enthusiasm. The sun was just clearing the horizon in the west and shining it's crisp winter light across the vast pine forests and desert scrubland of Arizona. The climb up the tower was worth it if only for this view, but she had a job at hand and the view served simply to gild a risky endeavor. Closer at hand, she could see the security barrier. Sure enough, the guns were down, but the pylons providing the barrier were still up and going strong. People pushed against it in panicky little groups, trying to find something they could grab onto and jump over or just trying to force their way through. It just made them look more like harried mice than before.
"Excellent!" She shouted, going back to the task at hand. The climb had been tough on them all, and once everything was in it's place, she'd given the workers leave to go and join those down below. They had offered to stay, not really meaning the offer but giving it none the less. Too eager to be off. L told them she'd be fine, that they could stay if they wanted, and readied her tools.
The first panel had been simple enough, with the lock cut and the switches revealed, she could start chewing some wires, metaphorically speaking. First, she pulled the fuses one by one, taking each out in turn and examining them like Catnip had showed her. Each one had a little filament inside, and if the glass or plastic was burnt or damaged, it could be thrown away and replaced. She wasn't going to do that though. Instead the fuses, good and bad, were yanked out and dropped into a bag which disconnected uneeded systems from the facility. Then the panel was closed up and L moved onto the next until she came to the main switch. Just a single small breaker and a series of lights. L stared at it for what seemed like minutes, before checking the rest of the box over. The one breakers importance had hit her hard for a moment. The whole thing hinged on this switch. Above one of the lights was a faded sticker that read "main power" and that one was black, but the other two were not. Two more LED bulbs, red and green. Currently, the red one was on. This one's label, a more durable raised metal sticker, read "do not activate if light is red! Personnel failing to follow this instruction will be marked for immediate termination and prosecution!!" L knew what to do. The dish above, it's pinkish metal glinting pleasingly in the morning sun and casting it's strange shadow over Pricetown, had to start spinning. All L had to do was unhook this box from the facility, a task she accomplished with a pair of bolt cutters and a wire stripper, and hook the generator up. When the light turned green, meaning the dish had reached synchronicity with the drive shaft below, all she had to do was flip the breaker and engage the link. Easy.
She gave one more appreciative look out over the desert before turning the generator on. There was a moment where her reverie at the sight turned to confusion at the smell and sound that came out of the generator as it turned over, in the moment before the it suddenly exploded.
-
Catnip didn't hear the sound of the electric generator belching electric fire as it's innards fried and circuits fused, as the sabotaged starter did it's hellish task. What she heard instead, was George shouting over the roaring driveshaft and howling wind as he explained how to set up the remaining terminals to automatically manage the system after everything was in it's place and squared away. They'd discovered the miraculously intact and operable terminal around the same time L was dismissing the men who helped her get the generator where it needed to be.
"You know," Catnip shouted back, "If this thing is able to maintain itself, we could probably set it up to manage it's own coupling procedure. My friend Dee was really good at that sort of thing. You think we could do it?"
"Oh yes, certainly." George responded over the noise, "just input the command here and hit this key here." He jabbed at the screen with one well kept finger, then down at the enter key. "It's risky though if the dish above isn't up to speed and active. If the shaft tries to couple with a dish that isn't in sync with it, or even stopped entirely, it could damage the structure."
"It would rip the top of the tower off." Catnip said too low to hear. She could see it in her mind, her mechanical acumen taking over and simulating it for her brain to work out. The coupling would try to engage, the entire edifice would begin to rattle as the spokes slipped and stripped themselves against one another, and then the shaft would catch. When it did, it would simply twist the top off the tower and fling it away in so many useless pieces.
"I'm going to check the other terminals, maybe our luck will hold out and we can get this place a little more stable. Stay right there, and don't fiddle with anything." George shouted, putting a little emphasis on that last. Whatever trust there had been was gone, and Catnip didn't miss the way he glanced back at her as he crossed the walkway. How he never let her out of his sight. She watched him carefully, keeping a likewise careful eye on the man, and tucked her hands in her pockets. It wasn't until then that she felt the vibration of her radio receiving a transmission. It was so hard to hear it, the sound was being drowned out by the wind chamber, and so Catnip cranked the volume as high as it would go and held it up to her ear.
"-DESTROYED! ITS ON FIRE! CATNIP PLEASE ANSWER, PLEASE ANSWER!" The radio shrieked. It sounded like L, and her message...
"L?! What happened? What's going on?!" She shouted into the radio. Catnip had gone cold, seeing the ghost of an image floating up into the murky dark of her darkest fears. One of the workers dropped the generator and broke it, or maybe one of them had done it intentionally. Maybe all of them. Or... Or maybe it wasn't that bad, maybe L was just having trouble getting it started or-
"THE GENERATOR IS ON FIRE! CATNIP, IT JUST..." There was a long pause, and Catnip could imagine L suddenly stopping to get ahold of herself. Then, "God Nip, it just exploded..."
"Are you hurt L? What happened?" Catnip asked, going cold now. If the generator was down, then they were sunk.
"No... Er... Yeah, my arms all burnt and I... I can't stop twitching. My body feels all tight and..."
"Alright," Catnip said, trying to sound reassuring. Catnip knew the feeling L was describing. She had electrocuted herself more times than she could remember, but probably not nearly as bad as L had. While L had been speaking, Catnip had happened to glance around to where she'd been working the night before and spotted the empty wind cell. In an instant, she had an idea. A dangerous, stupid idea. "I'm coming up L, George and I are going to set the thing down here to couple automatically, but we've gotta be quick. George just go through explaining to me why this is gonna be risky, but it should work. Getting that dish moving is going to be the hard part I think." She said. Catnip didn't hear what L asked next. The radio was already back in it's cradle on her belt and the empty cell tucked under one arm.
"George, somethings gone wrong up top, we need to... George?" Catnip began, then looked around silently and with a rising uneasiness. She'd only been on the radio for a moment but in that time, George had gone.
-
Her eyes were drawn instinctively towards the tunnel near the end of the row of consoles, near where George had been, and recalled the night before. More than half asleep, something had come out of that tunnel. There wasn't anything down there though, Catnip had seen the floor plan of the facility, the old tunnel had been sealed off. Collapsed at the other end and filled in with concrete. There were rooms back there though, the work crews had stored numerous building supplies in the accessible side rooms. There was no reason for George to go down there, but Catnip felt strongly that he had. The dark opening seemed to breath, or perhaps she fancied it did. There came the faint smell of rotting wood and a touch of the taste of turpentine. She tapped a few of the keys on the console just as George showed her, and then hesitated with her finger over the enter key.
"George?" She called.
If there was a response, she didn't hear it. There was an almost imperceptible shift in the dark of the tunnel though. Something like a pile of rags just beyond the arc of dim light cast from the rooms sole source. 'Of course,' she thought absently in a moment of the kind of clarity brought on by fear, 'she got to the generator when I ran from her. She wouldn't stop it from running, but that doesn't mean Tenny couldn't break the starter.' As if reading her mind, the shape moved into the light and all Catnip saw before tapping the enter key, snatching the empty cell, and bolting from the rotunda was the general shape of something that her terrified mind could only identify as a pile of shifting clothes. The screech of the creature that Had been Tenny Partridge followed after her, then was drowned out by the din of the towers lower half preparing to automatically engage.
She fled, and the mycus horror followed. There wasn't much time to waste, but if Catnip couldn't make some distance between herself and Tenny, she wouldn't have time to follow through with her plan. Not that any of that was on her mind. At the moment, most of her attention was just focused on trying to avoid the changling's attempts to cut her off. Now that she was outside the maelstrom of the howling towers wind chamber, the mechanics instincts took over. Her whiskers twitched at a bend in the hall and she dipped to the side just as some previously hidden horror came at her in an attack that was more flop than lunge. Not Tenny, it looked to Catnip's harried imagination like one of the missing workers. There was no time to wonder where they'd been hiding, only time to run. She hit a pair of access doors believing she'd bounce off, but instead barreled through it at full speed and almost threw herself to the ground. The early morning sunlight blinded her for a moment, and she nearly flipped over the rail opposite the door. Somewhere below, she heard someone screaming but didn't bother letting her eyes adjust. Her whiskers told her she was still being pursued. It was her one chance, she spun and for a moment saw it. The thing had resumed it's shape as the electrician, only in place of Tenny's clothes, she seemed to be covered in loose hanging rags that hung in folds and puffed small clouds of grey dust as she moved. Her eyes had shifted to the deep blue purple Catnip had seen in nightmares where she'd fled through the lab beneath Pricetown in the oppressive dark and grey fog of the Grey Queen. Catnip kicked the door shut, and slid her prybar through the handles. There was no telling exactly how strong Tenny was, but the way the door bowed and the bar creaked told her that it would only hold for a little while.
By the time Catnip reached the first of the Howling towers landings, the smell of electric smoke hit her. The generator was burning, just as L had said it was. Since there was time now, Catnip fumbled the empty wind cell open and slipped the intact vortex stone into it and twisted the slots closed. Instantly the cell took on a strange weight and tension that was obvious through the super alloy sleeve. A crash from somewhere below scared her into motion again, Tenny would catch up quickly if she stayed where she was. Up and up, taking the steps two at a time until it felt like her lungs were on fire and her side felt like someone had inserted a steel pin there.
"There is a pin there..." She thought madly, her life flashing before her crazily for a moment, "They put it in when the RV exploded, when I broke my back..." Terror had brought clarity and it seemed the only thing that clarity wanted to remind her of was all that she'd been through. There was a rod in her leg, a series of pins in her back and side, a plate in her shoulder. So many scars, so many injuries. She had made Kathrine worry so much with the things she did to herself, and was that right? "Kathrine!" Catnip cried out hoarsely.
From lower down, Catnip heard a cry in response. Below, Tenny had begun her own ascent.
-
L was nowhere to be seen, instead what greeted Catnip when she reached the top of the tower was an electric generator burning merrily to itself while the tower shook under it. Catnip took hold of the wind cell and prayed to Agmen. With every step up the tower, the cell had become more and more like a bomb, active and ready to blow at the slightest provocation, or given enough time. She gave it an experimental turn and felt the uncharacteristic grind of super alloy on steel. She could open it, but it was dangerous. There was also the risk to the dish. She had no idea exactly what would happen when she opened the canister or how powerful it would be. All Catnip could do was pray and hope she was doing the right thing. She gave the dish an appreciative look, perhaps a longer look than was safe. Three pink parabolas dotted with fist sized holes arranged irregularly about their surfaces. No dish was the same as the ones it sat between, and no hole seemed exactly the same as the others. To Catnip, the natural breeze atop The tower seemed not to blow, but to breath through those holes. She stared long at the dishes and with one hand, reached out and touched it knowing fully that she didn't have time for the reverie but helpless to stop. The feel of it sent a ecstatic jolt down her spine that made her shiver. It was like touching something divine. Like bone and metal made one. It was...
There was no time. Her whiskers caught movement a moment before her eyes did and she flinched away from the reaching hand made claw.
"Stupid rats!" The Tenny thing hissed, "Stupid rats and shriekers and triffids and... And stupid stupid rats! Not much time now, you can't start it now rat, can't stop the Grey Queen."
Catnip backed away, hissing a little herself and suddenly feeling outright pissed at the interruption rather than afraid of the creature advancing on her. Beneath her arm, she gave the canister a single half turn and heard the pressure within push the top half up the channel to the next turn with a loud "snap." Behind her, she caught more movement, someone or something dropping off the dish. If it was some new enemy coming at her from behind, she'd at least make them pay for profaning an object she already viewed as sacred. With her free hand, she held up something that glittered and glinted brilliantly in the cold dawn, it's little bells jingling unheard in the growl of the towers turbine.
"You evil thing!" Tenny hissed warrily, "You wicked evil thing, give it back, it's mine! Give it back or Rita will make you suffer!" Catnip didn't understand why Tenny had invoked the name of the Grey Queen, but the mimic's seeming inability to threaten Catnip with her own wrath gave the Mechanic more than enough confidence to do what came next.
"If you want it so bad, then you can go get it." Catnip hissed. With a flick of her wrist, the bracelet arced out and away into the blue yonder. Except, it didn't. With a move just as quick Tenny lashed out with one tendril and caught it, snagging the charm bracelet with a boney barbed claw like appendage. It wasn't much, but it would be all Catnip would get for a distraction. If anything had been gained from the attempt, it was that Tenny's minor display of flexibility meant that Catnip didn't have nearly enough space between them. She spun on her heel, saw L standing behind her with a look of pure terror writ large in her eyes, and then gave the canister the last half turn. The lid flew off with a deafening bang, giving Catnip no time to move her hand clear of it. The half she'd been holding, the handle, rocketed away from her and smashed one of the faulty circuit boards with the power of a cannon ball while the half Catnip held fired into her guts with matching force. She felt the railing, behind her. Then beneath her. Her back screamed a familiar agonizing protest, and then she was over and falling. Above, the dishes were spinning under the force of the gale released. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly now, the tower speeding by at a snail's pace. Then she was brought back around by a fresh gust as cold as a winter storm blowing across her face, and she realized she landed on something. Breath came hard, and she was coughing and felt like she was going to hock up her guts. Catnip wanted to vomit, but there was nothing. The retching only made her more aware of her condition, and only brought up thick gobs of bloody phlegm. For all intents and purposes Catnip was down and out, but not dead.
As soon as Catnip opened the canister, Tenny charged. The monster hadn't expected the explosion of air that had suddenly swept the mechanic off the walkway and down to her obvious death. She also hadn't expected the dish to begin it's terrible spin and it's even more terrible song. A loud dull groan that passed through the structure and passed through Tenny like a lemon on an open sore. She screamed and that was when L hit her.
The wrench had been in Catnip's bag, but L had been given the tool along with some others for the task she'd come up the tower to accomplish. She hadn't needed it of course, but perhaps it was better that she had it. Without it, she would have had nothing to hit the mycus horror with. The Misling was torn momentarily between watching her friend fall and fleeing before the anger came to her. A white hot anger. It wasn't for Catnip, it was for herself. The writhing thing howling it's agony to the sky. It was a wretched thing to behold, and L hated it. In the open light and without any focus on it's appearance, Tenny had let the disguise slip. The rags were now revealed to be what they were, gills like those on the underside of a mushroom unevenly grown all over the woman's wasted body, and the tendrils. Long gray this tipped with a little barbed claw. Only L knew they weren't claws. They were stingers. Stingers that stung and injected spores by the millions into people. Into people's husband's and children. L was here, but she was down in that cellar still. L would always be down in that cellar, and she could keep going despite that. She could still live despite the pain, and she could certainly make the shrieking monstrosity pay for what it had done.
The first blow crushed Tenny's skull, The second bent the wrench, and the third sent her tumbling over the side of the tower, bouncing noisily off the railing of the walkway Catnip had miraculously landed on and was even then 'expressing her dissatisfaction' with what had just happened to her. L had the insane urge to heave the electric generator down after Tenny. She would have done it, only the tower chose the following moment to shudder and shout it's own issues to anyone who would hear. It went from shuddering, to violent shaking all the while accompanied by a steadily rising "kachunk kachunk kachunk." The towers gears were stripping again one another, the rotors we're turning but not engaging. L stood stunned, staring at the flashing green light in the towers only good fuse box. Then, with a casualness that belied the adrenaline running through her, she pulled the switch. The noise increased tenfold and L thought for a very brief second that everything was going to come down regardless and that all their efforts were for nothing. The tower soon settled though, and left L standing alone in the smell of burning electronics, the beautiful blue of an Arizona early morning, and the voice of the howling tower.
-
Something touched Catnip's shoulder lightly and although the touch didn't feel particularly aggressive, Catnip spun with a snarl and brandished her fists before seeing who it was that had accosted her. The leftover gale from the stones discharge had masked L's approach from Catnip's whiskers and her smell from Catnip's nose. That same calamitous exhale had also seemingly blown Catnip's ear drums. That second lost sense had confused Catnip and she'd spent the better part of a minute between bouts of retching and heaving. L said something, but Catnip only cocked her head and gestured to her ears. All she could hear was a high ringing keep at the center of her head.
"What?" Catnip shouted, tottering on her feet. Balance wasn't coming easy, and just as she'd thought she had finally got it back, the walkway suddenly rose up to meet her and the blackness of unconsciousness took her.
Below, the barrier had fallen and the Shattered Helm and Searing Spear were filing into the complex and seeking out those infected with Mycus. It wasn't difficult. The howling tower did most of the work for them. Those infected were stricken with shooting pains through their body, and those too far gone to help simply screamed in pained agony. several stories below L and Catnip, the form that had been Tenny Parsons stayed deathly still among it's rapidly fading cloud of spores, and the grey dusty smear of the mycus that couldn't remain in cohesion about the withered corpse. No one could really figure out why she'd turn on the project and the town it was meant to protect, but L could guess. Later, she would collect the small silver chain from what was left and muse over it while waiting on Catnip at the clinic. As she figured it, Tenny hadn't been able to move on.
"Some people turn to the needle or the bottle Nip..." She would say to Catnip while she lay unconscious under a constant regime of RX12 and antifungal medication, "Some people turn to dice... If they're really desperate, they might even make a deal with the devil." L would slip the chain into a deep inside pocket of a new vest along side the rolled up paperwork. L wasn't free from debt, but her contract would be passed onto Catnip, as per her request to the Misling council, should the mechanic survive.
As for Catnip, it would be a week before she would be allowed to leave the clinic bed and another month before she could leave the clinic. A sprained wrist was the least of her problems. The pins in her back had kept her spine from breaking on impact with the railing, but the half cell that had rocketed out of her hands and hit her in the stomach like a ton of bricks had done more than a serious amount of damage. Three broken ribs, a ruptured gut, and a bruised lung. She'd heal fine thanks to the quick and proficient surgery of the clinics doctor, Efram Marsh, and a dangerously high dose of RX12, but like all the wounds the mechanic suffered over the course of her life, they would add up. She also needed to be on antifungus at all times. Back in New England, it had been a trivial matter to use the panacea that was RX12 on just about everything, but here in Arizona it was risky. The medicine had it's normal, deadly, side effects of course, but the real problem was this; it promoted the growth of Mycus in the body. If Catnip was infected, then it was a serious risk even with the Howling tower going full tilt.
L turned over something else she'd recovered. Something had told her that it would be needed, that Catnip would need it. The wind cell lay not far from where Tenny's sad existence had finally come to an end, and inside the somewhat misshapen half she found, was a pristine pink stone the shape of a tear drop and covered in tiny little depressions. Each was placed irregularly about the surface of the stone and no two were the same depth or size. The stone itself seemed to have been carved into a shape like one of the cone spiral shells some sea mollusks had. Her eyes were drawn to it. Drawn into the little depressions and following the line of each as they twisted down and down into some unseen infinite apex. L had to shake herself sometimes and wrench her gaze from it, as it felt like she would be sucked into the thing if she stared too long. It felt right though.
Nearby, Catnip's breath hitched. Dr. Marsh had told her that it was normal, her right lung had been injured after all. L gave the stone another look before placing it back in Catnips bag, and she could have sworn that as she did so, the bag seemed to aspirate, and Catnip's breathing regularized with it. It was a ridiculous notion, but all the same... L went out from Catnip. There would be time to come back again and contemplate the strange object more tomorrow and visiting hours were almost over. L had a deposition to make on the just what had happened in the Howling Tower facility, and she didn't want to be late. A look back and then she was gone. Strolling up Chief Street L felt her step grow lighter and realized that she had finally begun to heal, and move on.
-
INTERMISSION: The Howling Towers and Singing Towers
The Howling Tower
The Howling tower initiative came about after concerns about the virulence of the fungal lifeform hereafter refered to as "Mycus," became too great to ignore. In the lab, the Mycus proved to be not just virulent, but effective as well. Plans to weaponize the fungal agent we're scrapped at a very early stage when the Mycus proved impossible to control. Simply containing it, should a problem arise, became the primary concern of all labs associated with Mycus research. For the purpose of dealing with the problems associated with handling the Mycus, there were suggested many solutions. Incineration has always proved an effective way to eliminate said fungal infestation of areas, while certain antifungal agents could be administered to persons infected by Mycus spores. At some point though, individual Mycus life forms develop a resistance or outright immunity to high temperature while subjects who are infected for long periods of time become resistant to antifungal agents or become one with the infection themselves. It was discovered though, through testing, that the Mycus suffers from a sensitivity to sound. The mechanism behind this sensitivity isn't understood in the least, except that said sensitivity can be exploited to hinder Mycus cohesion. By no means will it remove or totally stop infection/infestation, but it will make finding the effected easier and slow the spread of Mycus dramatically.
There was a great deal of testing and trial and error involved in finding the optimal harmonic waveform for the purpose of suppression of Mycus lifeforms and in the end we had to resort to a facility which, in layman's terms, consists of an upscaled expensive weathervane. More precisely though, the Howling Tower is a facility consisting of offices, a small lab and barracks facilities for military staff, storage for [REDACTED] as well as [REDACTED] for operating the facility independently of the local power grid. The facility is also outfitted with a rudimentary but sophisticated "F&F" security matrix. The tower itself is a specially designed structure attached to the main facility consisting of a large [REDACTED] generator connected to a super alloy axle seated in an egg shaped rotunda. Above this, attached to the axle at the top is a secondary [REDACTED] supported by a tower of steel girders supplemented by an alloy superstructure. The parabolic dishes affixed to [REDACTED] are fashioned from an alloy of super alloy heavily supplemented with [REDACTED] supplied at great cost by [REDACTED].
The facilities construction ensures that it can remain functional indefinitely off grid, but is outfitted with numerous fail-safes should the worst occur. Electrical subsystems can be easily rerouted in the event of a short or swapped out entirely in the event of major damage due to [REDACTED]. The axles composition means that while it may suffer surface deformation over time, it will not wear away or lose it's main shape so much as to compromise it's function. Each dish is perforated at mathematically determined points in such a way as to allow air to pass through them as they spin. The material and design, as well as the device providing rotation, ensures that a sound is produced at the exact harmonic wavelength for optimal disruption of Mycus cohesion.
See handbook CC11X2, fungal/floral containment procedures, for details concerning operation of the Howling Tower and for instructions on remote activation procedures in case Howling Tower installation suffers heavy damage or Mycus infestation.
The Singing Tower
Construction of a Singing Tower is functionally identical to that of a Howling Tower, except that the dishes are fabricated from [REDACTED] and perforation is more regularized between them. This leads to a sound which is more sonorous and pleasing to the ear. The sound also happens to resonate much more violently with the environment. As such, Singing Towers are much less stable. To understand how Singing Towers effect Mycus, one must understand the relationship between the Mycus and the Triffids.
The Triffids are a species of plant life forms spanning genus many and varied. These plant like life forms are one of a very small number of creatures capable not only of resisting the Mycus, but also of preying upon it. For this reason it was decided that rather than relying heavily on Howling Tower installations, the much more disposable Singing Tower. These installations, rather than suppress Mycus growth, promote plant growth. Much like more terrestrial plants, Triffids are effected by the vibrations caused by sound waves, jostling their cells and promoting further growth. The melodic resonance from a Singing Tower has been tuned for just this purpose.
By promoting Triffid colonies, the hope is that Triffid life will spread further and faster than the Mycus, which will be slowed by the Howling Towers. There is of course the chance that the Triffids will prove too sedentary to grow too far from the towers once they are active. Another worry is that Triffids could grow out of control and overtake the local environment much as the Mycus would. Use of the Singing Tower may also lead to the cultivation of Triffid “gardens.” Such Gardens would be an easily renewable source of food, building material, and Triffid toxin used to make antifungal agents and defoliants.
See handbook CC11X2, fungal/floral containment procedures, for details concerning operation of the Singing Tower and for instructions on remote activation procedures in case Howling Tower installation suffers heavy damage or Mycus infestation. Damage to tower is likely to occur as Triffid growth takes place.
The Screaming Tower and Operation Windchime
[REDACTED]
-
Outside Pinkies Pleasure Palace, Chief street was a dark dead river, lit here and there by the aging arc sodium's that lined it. Pricetown was asleep, but these days Pricetown never slept too deeply. There's was too much to worry about, too much to do, and there was a fight brewing. Cousin emerged from the alley beside Pinkies and approached the side door where he knew Minx would be waiting. He was disappointed to find that she wasn't, but all the same excited to see that she hadn't forgot about him. Minx had been out, and she had left him something. A bowl of heavenly scraps and a little something extra. The extra, the peyote, eased his mind and gave him respite from the many voices, sharpening them into one voice. One soothing voice to ease the aches of his psychically battered brain. With the scraps down and the drugs doing their work, he rested on the step and listened. The voice spoke to him amidst the sound of the distant Howling Tower, graced him with what wisdom he could understand. It was the voice of the vortex, the song of the cyclone, and 'she' had brought it. 'She' was even then sitting in a room high above him, working on the final touches of a gift for a far away friend. Cousin knew that it would see use long before that friend got to see it, but that would be fine all the same. It was being made to be used.
Then he heard it, the thing he had truly come to hear. The humming. It lilted down to him from on high, just as he knew it would. The discordant sing song nothing tune of the inventors humming while she worked. If the peyote soothed Cousins mind, then it was the humming that rubbed the balm of it into every crease of his brain. Catnip created and when Catnip created, others followed suit. Cousin could never look at her though, even if he liked the music she made, Catnip was just too... Brilliant. She made cousin nervous with her strange nature. No one else saw it, but then again no one else had cousins gift. Cousin could see. Cousin knew. He let the ballad of invention wash over him, and let the foreign images play out in his head. A tiny lady with spots, a man in a suit of armor, a train, a farm, a terrifying girl with several arms, chocolate, and so many more faces and things. Beneath it all, deep down, there was the machine. The roiling mass of gears and cogs and steam and boilers. There was a shifting maze of sparks and wires and all manner of invention. The great engine, a young God. More interestingly, there was another younger God present. It flitted formless and weightless, but not presenceless, from place to place. A small thing filled with power. Filled with potential. The song of Catnip was the song of this other.
The door next to him creaked open and bumped him, only shaking him from his musings a little until he heard the voice.
"Hey! Finally decided to show up you old Coy? I see you found what I left for you. Silly old dog." Minx said, splitting the quiet night with her gentle voice. Cousin rolled his head over to look up at her and grinned langorously. The coyote blinked slowly at the images fleeing from his ken in favor of the image above him. She scratched his ear and he rolled over to expose an unusually well kept belly ready to be rubbed. The humming was soothing and the images were enlightening, but the ministrations of his favorite human were just divine. No coyote had ever known such pleasure as the ear scratches or belly rubs of a favored human.
"I see a field of roses in bloom..." He said. Minx hadn't asked for a horoscope, but it seemed he was going to give one anyway. "I see trees of green, a faraway place. An engine which screams and the loss of all hope. Trials begin, blood will flow, resolve will be tested. Victory precipitates a dizzying fall. The outsider stirs, his siblings wait beyond. First will come the Void Star, the council will call him soon. Plague strider will stop him and be reshaped in her despair. My vision dims, and thus the mirror of prophecy is darkened."
Cousin lay were he was for a long time watching Minx with his clouded eyes, and she watched him right back while she sorted through what he'd told her. The prophecy wasn't meant for her but it wasn't really meant for the person it was for either. A general horoscope then? Minx scratched the top of his head again and his eyes cleared. Soon he was grinning up at her with his daffy dogs grin, and asking if there would be anymore food or peyote of, god forbid, "smash." Above, Catnip's humming went on uninterrupted, her work nearly at its end and soon to face all the trials it's future owner would put it through himself.
-
"YEEHAW!" Cried the bandit as he made the jump from motorcycle to fuel truck before being picked off the side like a beetle struck by a stone. His body flipped over and dropped, not yet lifeless until the truck rolled over him and crushed what was left of it into oblivion. Another bandit made the jump from the back of a Jeep and managed to make it all the way to the cab before the Shattered Helm sniper managed to pluck him from the trucks hide.
"Shields up men!" Ordered the captain under a hail of returning fire coming from the fast approaching truck and it's unwanted convoy of harriers. The shields came up like a wall on either side of the road, bristling with the glinting barrels and scopes of shotguns and long rifles. When the order to fire was given, the wall of shields erupted into one of smoke, licking flames, and thunderous gunfire before the shield in front seemed to fold up and new shields took their place and yet another volley of lead and steel met the harassing bandits. Blood flew in a mist and motorcycles toppled. The pursuing Jeep swerved once towards the semi, then back and off the road to twist itself into a heap against a pair of old pines. A falling bandit squeezed the trigger of his gun, some automatic thing by the looks, and stitched a line up the side of the tanker releasing a spray of black onto the asphalt.
"Clear a path men, that tankers loaded with crude! Move! Move!" The captain shouted at the sight of the impending disaster.
"That ain't oil cap'!" One of his men shouted back, "Oil don't fuckin' scream when the sun hits it!" The black fluid ran in spurting screaming runnels down the side of the tanker. The Shattered Helm scattered to and fro, unexpectedly in a life or death battle with an entirely different but familiar for. The blob came on, shrieking and sprouting crusted claws and teeth only to be blown apart again. The captain caught sight of the trucks driver as the vehicle passed and locked eyes. What he saw was something not entirely human in those strange empty eyes.
"Retreat! Everyone fucking retreat! The shriekers will just sink back into the earth if you give em nothing to go after! Get that fucking truck and bring it to a-" he began. Then, the tanker split open. An infernal metal egg with a screaming still born. "Get the fuck out of here! Go! Go! Go!"
-
Catnip reached out her window and fished around until she found what she'd hung outside to finish. Meanwhile, Minx was telling her about current events. It seemed these days that Catnip went out less, and so wasn't getting the news. In reality, she wasn't going out when other people were so thick in the streets. The episode in the Howling Tower had a profound effect on her. Where large groups of people had been Catnip's jam back in new england, making her feel somewhat safe, here in Arizona there was a kind of unease. Mix that with the threat of infection that seemed so common among Pricetowns Misling residents, Catnip couldn't bring herself to go out. When the sun had retreated in the sky a bit and the mazey heat haze of day had receded to something that baked off of everything, unseen. She could move around easily then and get away with much more than she normally could.
She tested the enamel on what she'd made, tapping it with a small dental hook to make sure it didn't take a mark. "Yeah, it was a disaster alright." Minx went on as though Catnip had given her any input on what she was saying. "Draft is on now I guess. Lucky you and I are safe from that stuff."
"What's a draft?" Catnip asked. Her only experience with "draft" was in making rough plans or beer.
"Uh, It's a thing where you have to be in the military against your will. You and I are safe because we work here." Minx explained incredulously. Catnip nodded slowly at that, unsure of what to make of it. Personally, she moved a lot and said little, but heard much. She was unsure because she had heard the negotiations that went on behind Pinky's closed door. There was nothing to worry about, but it still gave her pause. Since escaping the Howling Tower, Pinky had been made many offers for Catnip. Nothing for L though. Technically, L didn't belong to anyone except Catnip and Catnip wasn't willing to say that she "owned" her. Catnip on the other hand was an accomplished and proven master mechanic and craftsman. The Shattered Helm wanted her for their maintenance crew, the owners of the aeroponics plant wanted her for the line, and many many water merchants and bullet farmers wanted her for their own profit making schemes. Since the attack on the Shattered Helm barricade a few days before, and the sudden overt aggressive moves from Pricetowns northern neighbor, Algol, The Shattered Helm and Aeroponics facility had doubled down in a desperate attempt to give themselves the upper hand in their branches of Pricetowns hierarchy.
Catnip wouldn't bother with it. She wouldn't be here much longer anyway, or so she thought. There were plans above her table, rough schematics using her newly recovered holy relic. She'd once seen a helicopter and it had been the basis for her plan. Build herself a flying machine and fly all the way home. The real problems were finding somewhere to build it safely, and finding her way home once it was built. Minx passed her a boiled egg which she took with thanks before the talk went on for awhile. When the day grew dim, Minx would leave and Catnip would put the final touches on her gift for a certain knight out of time. Then she would go out. After, sleep Then...
Catnip woke early the next day to Pinky screaming at someone up the hall, and an envelope sliding it's way under her door.
-
YOU CAN'T FUCKING DO THIS!" Pinky shrieked, momentarily deafening the man slipping envelopes under doors and at least one other doing the same thing further down the hall. "I'LL HAVE YOUR... your... YOUR FUCKING BADGE!"
The man, despite the feral shrieking woman, seemed to be taking all this in stride said simply, "We don't have badges." This of course set the Albino Misling off on another tirade of deafening screaming and obscenities the likes of which would have Kathrine fainting dead away. Pinky was practically frothing with rage, but undeterred the man went on. "It's not in my hands anyway Ma'am. The Misling and city councils have handed down the order personally. You can take it up with them if you want. Personally though, I'm with you. My son-"
"YOUR SON?!" Pinky cut in sharply, "WHAT ABOUT MY STAFF? WHAT ABOUT MY BUSINESS!?" It went on and on, Pinky heaving all the abuse she could at the man, a soldier of some kind by his dress, and he simply standing there and taking it. It was clear to Catnip that he was a person who'd seen a great deal of this kind of treatment in his time, and in a way sort of enjoyed it.
"Your staff will be trained enough to go out and come back, we need every hand we can get. They'll mostly be digging trenches and-" he began.
"DIGGING TRENCHES!?" Pinky howled, "THE ONLY TRENCHES MY STAFF SHOULD BE DIGGING ARE THE ONES BETWEEN-"
"Mister Os- sorry, Captain Ostler?" Asked a young woman in loose fitting Pricetown fatigues who'd managed to sneak up while the man, Ostler, had been trying to be reasonable with the establishments proprietor, "I've run out of draft slips sir." Pinky waited as patiently as a boiling pot for Captain Ostler to give the lady, more girl than lady, Pinky noted angrily, a fresh stack of envelopes to feed under the doors of the brothels bedrooms. When that business was concluded Pinky had regained a bit of composure and went on more calmly.
"This is bullshit you know, absolute bullshit. Whatever happened to my influence here in town?" She asked.
"Gone with King I'm afraid." Ostler stated matter of factly.
"We both know I'm not going to get them all back." Pinky seguied. She looked up the hall to where Catnip was standing and watching them, a plain white envelope held with both hands. The sight seemed to nettle Pinky, so she shot her glare back on the Captain. "She's not even going to go onto your maintenance line, is she? Catnip, get your butt in your room goddamnit." Catnip, feeling the tension now, did as she was told. Slowly.
"That's the one Command has been dickering with you over?" The Captain asked before going on, "Not likely. She'll end up in the regs. If she's lucky and shows a bit of aptitude, maybe the Shattered Helm. Listen Ma'am, from what I've seen so far your staff are living pretty soft compared to the rest of Pricetown. Chances are, most of them aren't going to get past the basic physical and they'll be right back between the sheets in no time."
"So? Some of them will pass. She'll pass it, no problem." Pinky huffed, thinking of Minx. Minx was plenty soft, but Minx's unique augmentation would make her an asset, if the draft could find her. Chances were they wouldn't, but still. Pinky tapped her foot angrily, then huffed again. "What it boils down to is I missed out. I missed my chance to cash in my chips and I'm about to take a hit to my pocket book?"
"I don't know about that. When she comes back-" he began
"IF she comes back." Pinky corrected.
"Alright, if. If she comes back, she's going to have a great deal more experience than she had before, maybe come back a hero. Wouldn't that be good for business?" Ostler asked.
"No." Pinky said sneering a little, "It would be good for business if she worked from her bed, but she doesn't. No, if she comes back then it's either gonna be in a body bag or with even more trauma than she's got already."
Ostler didn't tell her that the Sanguine council rarely sent people back at all, and those that they did send back would be better off dead. Telling her that wouldn't make it any better, and the woman was clearly loathe to give the mechanic up. He didn't tell her that any fighting would likely be a hellish ordeal, Regs and Shattered Helm trying to beat back the swarm of screechers coming out of Algol in tanks disguised to look like water deliveries. The events of the road block still stuck out in his mind vividly, and it was that horrendous image that kept him thinking, "How did they get so much of it into a fuel truck, and why? Algol had a regular army, so why send such an unpredictable thing to Pricetown?" He shook his head to himself. Questions to be answered. They would find out soon enough.
-
And that was how a week later, Catnip found herself drafted and on her way to the front lines as a member of Pricetown's regular militia along with half of Pinky's staff. She barely had time to grab a few choice items and say goodbye to her friends before being shuffled into a truck and taken to Camp Frontline where she and the others would be trained. It was while at this camp that Catnip first made the acquaintance of a foul tempered woman her own age by the name of Billy-Jean Dawson. Billy-Jean was the quartermaster by virtue of her expertise in the area of guns. Billy-Jean loved guns. Rifles, pistols, tanks, shotguns, cannons, rockets, bombs, grenades, and especially machine guns and assault rifles. Billy-Jean adored everything machine guns and assault rifles. Catnip would find out during her training that the girl even had body pillows bearing the blueprints of her favorite machine guns. Knowing this, one would think that the two of them would hit it off immediately. An inventor with a deep appreciation for the design of guns and an "ammosexual" woman in charge of maintaining the armory of the town they were both in service to.
No. Not even a little. Catnip liked her but outwardly Billy-Jean found Catnip to be annoying and destructive. An influence of alteration to her world of regularity. Catnip would make suggestions to how an implement could be improved or just work on it herself and Billy-Jean would raise the racks over it. Within a short time, the sound of the quartermaster screaming had become a regular occurrence around Camp Frontline. Building brand new guns from the pieces of others was also a big no no under the roof of Billy-Jeans armory. Her armory was a domain of order and equilibrium just as Catnips garage back home had been to her. Secretly, Billy-Jean thought highly of Catnip. The designs she brought to the quartermaster were excellent and when she was just cleaning and maintaining the implements under her care, Catnip was better than all of the others. The average private, Billy-Jean thought, couldn't be trusted to properly maintain a slam fire shotgun. Catnip though could not only maintain, but manufacture and replace parts with little more than hand tools. Catnip would enjoy it even.
"You can't just cut the barrel off a moist-nugget like that! Get out of my armory! OUT! YOU'VE ALREADY DONE IT!? NOOOO! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!!!" The possum faced woman shrieked, chasing Catnip out of the workshop and out onto the parade field. "It was perfect already! Why did you have to Obrez it!?"
"I need a shorter gun!" Catnip shouted back, risking punishment for insubordination again, "Come on, Obrez are cool! You said so yourself! I can't use a shield and that long nugget anyway!"
"Obrez are only cool when they're made that way in the first place! Not when you ruin a perfectly good rifle to do it!" Billy-Jean screamed indignantly back. The possum mutant was wringing her tail and stomping out to meet Catnip, a sure sign that trouble was coming. Catnip may have liked Billy-Jean and secretly Billy-Jean liked her, but that didn't mean that Billy-Jean wouldn't storm after Catnip and dive on her in a hissing spitting brawl if Catnip displeased her too much and Catnip, who grew up with siblings who expressed their love by getting into brawls, would oblige by fighting back.
"Quartermaster! Private! Just what the flying frying fuck do you two think you're doing!?" Barked a man armor moving to intervene. "You've both been told! Watch your fucking attitude Quartermaster, and cut the antagonistic shit Private!"
Billy-Jean stiffened to attention while Catnip simply glanced around and hunched down sharply to find the source of the sudden verbal assault. "She wasn't being antagonizing, sir, just um..." Billy-Jean began sheepishly.
"What attitude?" Catnip said with a hint of a hiss as she eased up. The face of man who had approached was hidden by a helmet much like those of the warwalkers Catnip had seen back home during the raid on the refugee center and it had taken a detailed explanation for her to understand that the suit was simply that, a suit. Through that Helmet though, it was impossible to see what the man beneath was thinking. His facial expressions completely hidden. If Catnip had known it she would have been a bit perplexed by the knowing grin on the man's face at that moment.
"Nevermind. I have orders for Private Walker and it just so happens she'll be needing a shorter gun anyway. Seems she's saved you the trouble, eh Billy?" The man said authoritatively. Billy-Jean gave some grunt of dissatisfied relent and he went on. "Walker, report to the Shattered Helm Barracks, you're off the regs."